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Regular Domains Have More Malware Than Porn Sites
SnugglesTheBear writes "New research pours scorn on the comforting but erroneous belief that Windows surfers who avoid smut and wares on the Web are likely to avoid exposure to malware. A study by free anti-virus firm Avast found 99 infected legitimate domains for every infected adult website. In the UK, Avast found that more infected domains contained the word 'London' than the word 'sex.' Among the domains labeled as infected by Avast was the smartphones section of the Vodafone UK website. The mobile phone operator's site contained a malicious JavaScript redirect script that attempted to take advantage of an unpatched Windows Help and Support Centre flaw (CVE-2010-1885) to infect the machines of visiting surfers."
"London", as a keyword, is a heavy spam target. I used to use "London Hotels" as a test case for SiteTruth's web spam detector. Google used to do badly on that search. (Since they started handling travel destinations as a special case, the first 10 Google results are now either paid ads or results from the business search engine.)
In the UK, Avast found that more infected domains contained the word 'London' than the word 'sex.'
Maybe it's due to my weird fetishes, but none of the porn sites I visit actually contain the word "sex".
It's all fine and good to point out that for every porn site there are 99 non-porn sites that have malware.
But what are the percentages of said catagories infected?
What percentage of porn sites have malware?
What percentage of non-porn sites have malware?
If the percentages are high enough for a category, it is a good idea to avoid that category, even if it is a tiny percentage of total sites.
Does that still hold true in terms of traffic? It doesn't matter how many sites have malware, it matters how often those sites are visited. One high volume site with malware does more damage than a thousand sites that no one visits.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
People in the porn business are in it to make money. For the most part, they work together. Ever notice how they all link/ad/popup to more sites all within their clique?
There's more money in repeat subscriptions than regular joe getting infected with Malware.
So however you look at it, you get fucked.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I lived in a centrally located but rather crummy neighborhood of NYC back in the early '80s. Late at night cars would be backed up up several blocks waiting in a line so they could turn down my street and pick up a hooker.
Funny thing is, the neighborhood seemed perfectly safe. I never had any trouble getting to or from my apartment at any hour of the day or night. I figured it was probably one of the safest areas of NYC because any crime would have been bad for business.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
> How many of those redirects lead to adult sites?
Probably not many. After all, porn sites actually have a legitimate (or at least legal) internet business model with revenue. Why do they need to infect their customers with malware? The newspapers on the other hand are struggling to figure out how to get people to pay for their content.
What's more, I imagine mostly lonely guys visit porn sites. And who are lonely guys? Geeks! (present company excluded, of course :). And geeks use Firefox, NoScript, etc., so they're hard to infect. If you want to build your fleet of rooted zombies, I'd imagine sites that a bunch of old people who are still using IE 5 on unpatched Windows 2000 is your best bet. And unless they've responded to a Viagra e-mail, I would guess grandma and grandpa aren't visiting porn sites.