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5 Million Domains Serving Malware Via Network Solutions

Posted by Soulskill on from the going-for-the-gusto dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A compromised widget provided by Network Solutions was serving malware on otherwise legitimate websites. But, as bad as this discovery was, it was overshadowed a couple of days later by another revelation: the widget is automatically included on every 'parked domain' by Network Solutions! Searches on Google and Yahoo! revealed 500,000 and 5,000,000 domains affected and serving malware, respectively. A manual check of some 200 parked domains on the list showed that all of them were provided with the malware-serving widget." The researchers who uncovered this issue alerted Network Solutions, and the widget was taken down a few hours later.

7 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Network Solutions by ravenspear · · Score: 5, Insightful

    used to be the place to go for domains.

    Now they are completely redundant.

    1. Re:Network Solutions by SpaceLifeForm · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sure, and you have just provided evidence that you did not RTFA.

      --
      You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
  2. At least they did the right thing by Abstrackt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "The researchers who uncovered this issue alerted Network Solutions, and the widget was taken down a few hours later."

    Sucks that it happened, but at least they did something about it as soon as they found out.

    --
    They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
    1. Re:At least they did the right thing by steveo777 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Can you imagine being the people who were responsible for the widget? Not that I like them, but they must be pretty proud that it worked for as long as it did...

      --
      This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
  3. Shrugged off, but root cause needs regulation by vlueboy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sad that this malware problem is still not going to be enough to outlaw or reduce parked domains. Heck, network solutions doesn't even get a slap in the wrist for failing to check their modules.

    Also, governments hate spending money on laws to regulate the internet... how about we let the current de-facto rulers of the internet do it: Search engines and browsers should do even more to stop malware domains from ever appearing in results or being reachable?

    1. Re:Shrugged off, but root cause needs regulation by rotide · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Once you start blocking "for the good of x" someone will come along and complain that "y" should be on that list too or yet another person will come along and claim that it is unfair that their site "x" was blocked. Staying neutral and allowing anything to be displayed as long as it is spider-able keeps them free of censoring/uncensoring and/or policing. Simply getting addons to your favorite browser and/or using a DNS that filters the way you like it are the best solutions.

  4. Re:Ad Muncher would have protected everyone. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why pay $30 when Adblock is free?

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865/