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Symantec: Religious Sites "Riskier Than Porn For Viruses"
First time accepted submitter kongshem writes "According to Symantec's annual Internet Security Threat Report, religious and ideological websites have far more security threats per infected site than adult/pornographic sites. Why is that? Symantec's theory: 'We hypothesize that this is because pornographic Web site owners already make money from the Internet and, as a result, have a vested interested in keeping their sites malware-free — it's not good for repeat business,'"
But jebus will protect me so I don't need your silly anti-virus
@Random_Adam
Sometimes a sig doesn't have to be funny!!
If the problem is that porn sites are more heavily monetized, that means the religions need to catch up. They could offer all kinds of services online for a price -- even eternal salvation.
Some religions already offer this, of course. Looks like a good deal to me!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
First they infect the children. Then they infect the computer.
Luckily a little bit of reading usually helps with the disinfection process.
There, someone had to say it :-)
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Of course, some would describe religion thus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viruses_of_the_Mind
So how are they categorizing pornographic websites? What are the other 9 categories that are more "dangerous"?
While promiscuous sex may make you ill, religions and ideologies actually kill people
Interestingly, the same is also true for sexually transmitted viruses in the physical world.
(Oh yeah, you can bet I'm clickin' Anonymous Coward on this one...)
What kind of sites are you surfing on?
I don't really have much to add to the conversation. I'm just happy to see somebody call it the hypothesis that it is, rather than the theory that it isn't.
Well, you know. Let's just be honest, logical thinking. And the more religious you are the less you do of that. And keeping a well run website takes a bit of thought, preparedness. So, there we are
While their ideas may be true, by my understanding it's mainly the free porn sites that are riskiest. It used to be that they set up expensive dialers, or other ways to make money. I believe it's a way for them to make money other than by serving ads or selling subscriptions, and that actually webmasters installed that stuff on their sites. Those dialers at least tended to be called after porn sites, and actually gave (paid) access to the sites.
Dialers don't work anymore these days of course, with no-one using modems and dial-up. And maybe webmasters have cleaned up their act too.
Now those religious sites, they are usually set up by people with a passion - to spread a certain message, about a religion or otherwise, and that are often people with little or no knowledge on setting up a website and keeping it malware free. As such I would expect such sites to be a relatively soft target for malware attackers, that then use the site to distribute their wares without the webmaster knowing. A very different scenario.
That porn sites are often in it for the money, will definitely also help. At least they'll have someone around that knows how to secure a web site.
ninth!
This is what you get when you preach abstinence-only sex education.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
"pornography leads to terrible crimes against women and children" [from http://conservapedia.com/Porn%5D citing my sources for the reliable truth of the matter... this is reliable isn't it?
Religious Sites "Riskier Than Porn For Viruses"
Is that the risk of a meme or a computer virus?
It is interesting to note that Web sites hosting adult/pornographic content are not in the top five, but ranked tenth. The full list can be seen in figure 16. Moreover, religious and ideological sites were found to have triple the average number of threats per infected site than adult/pornographic sites. We hypothesize that this is because pornographic website owners already make money from the internet and, as a result, have a vested interest in keeping their sites malware-free – it’s not good for repeat business.
Figure 16, interestingly, does not show religious and ideological sites, I assume it is grouped with "Education/Reference". The full top 10 is
Click here if you love jesus! is pretty likely to get a good number of hits on a religious site -- similarly for Obama haters (or lovers). It's a reflex action that will get these people in some really hot water.
Porn site users, on the other hand, are a bit more jaded.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Rather than trying to keep in mind which sites not to visit you could just upgrade your browser to a version that can't be hacked by a website. Of course, AV companies would get far less money without naive people believing their FUD.
You're kidding right? Monetisation is the backbone of all major and proselytising religions.
I think we should give porn (and other commercial sex services like prostitution) the tax free status possessed by all religions, no matter how stupid, dangerous, or just obviously fraudulent. If scientology, sleazebag televangelists and the pope can all soak the gullible for millions and not pay a cent in taxes, why shouldn't porn stars and prostitutes? At least they're honest when they lie to you.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Since I've been 'religiously' reading slashdot for over a decade now, incalculably more regularly than I've gone to church, shall I assume that slashdot is likely delivering me malware right now?
Seriously, since CmdrTaco left, and to be honest, many years prior to that and the recent SlashBI goodness, things have been going way downhill. This past year I've still skimmed each 600+ post global warming article, because it seems important enough, and the slashdot flamefests, despite the signal to noise ratio, sadly seem more intelligent than any other conversation on the topic. But threads like this, where every last highly moderated comment seems like nothing more than a troll-response bounty for the pageview-centric new management... Ehh. If there is one comment that breaks me of my slashdot religion, it was probably the first Score:5 comment on this thread- "Obama ate a a dog!". I guess the planet will just have to burn...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/04/28/2214228/google-releases-fcc-report-on-street-view-probe
P.S., I may be a bit intoxicated, but I have no idea how that repitition just occurred. Probably the same way Google's stupid instant search causes typos at a 10+% rate because it can't keep up with my typing speed which is too far from the mainstream herd they care about. The internet sucks, boo, get off my lawn...
Do they mean *free* porn sites, or *paid* porn sites?
There's definitely a difference.
Atheist porn fans have less malware. The benefits to not being a religious prude just keep on a coming.
I have met many clever people who are members of churches, but their time given to their churches is voluntary.
Often the equipment has been donated as well, and so is usually not particularly modern either.
The website design is usually managed by a committee, as is the choice of hosting provider, and costs are kept to a minimum.
The net result is that once the web site is finally done, it may be neglected, or someone inherits the responsibility for it who knows little about its history, and might be more secretarial than technical. Thus security updates get neglected, and quite often there are many user accounts with weak passwords.
The Symantec report, the Internet Security Threat Report, 2011 Trends, did not say what the article in the OP claims.
The actual report is here: http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/other_resources/b-istr_main_report_2011_21239364.en-us.pdf . Page 33 of the report, the only discussion of religion, states
"religious and ideological sites were found to have triple the average number of threats per infected site than
adult/pornographic sites."
Three points:
1. The report lumps religious and ideological sites together. Maybe the infected sites were ideological (non-religious) sites. You cannot conclude anything about religious sites at all from that statistic.
2. The report implies nothing about the safety of religious/ideological sites. It just says that if a religious/ideological site is infected, then it has more threats on average than an infected adult site. If the percentage of religious/ideological sites that are infected is lower than the percentage of adult sites that are infected, then religious/ideological sites could be much safer on average. Indeed, figure 16 on page 36 of the report doesn't list religous/ideological sites as dangerous. The point is that the safety of religious/ideological sites as a whole must account for uninfected sites. The "number of threats per infected site" is just about irrelevant.
3. If there is any limit to the gullibility or statistical illiteracy of internet users, I have yet to perceive it.
But jebus will protect me so I don't need your silly anti-virus
Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.' "
Why would I want to test Linus?
It was a reference to Gnu/RMS, you insensitive clod!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
No one thinks that playboy.com is a malware site, but malware authors would rather use the promise of free porn on example.com or via an executable from a torrent than set up a religious site.
How can a site be dangerous for virus? It's not 1990 anymore, browsers have protection.
You expect a whore to give you a virus so you practice safe hex. No one ever expects the Church to give you a virus.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It should be expected because religions ARE viruses.
A virus is an executable which infects executables, and runs without user intervention.
I last saw one in 1993. A web-distributed virus is impossible by definition.
Anonymous did DDOS against it but I think failed to penetrate. Some religious groups take security more seriously than others.
Perhaps there is some correlation between religion and gullibility?
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
I can think of 1 or 2. I do not mean, of course, that nobody has falsely claimed to be Wiccan or Buddhist and used it to scam people. What I am saying is that - by definition - those people are not true Wiccans or Buddhists. In every other religion of which I am aware there is a proxy to Deity to whom you go and to whom you donate money. In Wicca and Buddhism, there is no proxy. There are those who are considered more enlightened, and to whom they look for guidance, but no official donation channels ala Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism, Scientology, etc.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Most religious organizations rely on as much volunteer work and "free" services as they can get. Often, a member of the organization will offer to provide a service free of charge (such as hosting, programming, installing a CMS, setting up a wireless network in the offices, etc.). When services like that are rendered by well-intentioned, but ignorant volunteers, websites are highly vulnerable to infection.
And thus the jerk was circled and cluster duely fucked.
You people have completely missed the point. Who cares about the religious issues. People should believe what the want?! This story is about something else. This is a disguised attempt at trying to groom clients. What a blatent attempt at trying to garnish the manure. Disgusting.
Find yourself a Local Church and make a serious offer to help out with the Tech Stuff. What i want to know is why FLOSS has not made more of an impact in the Christian Community?
How many missionaries to X are running about using MSO (most likely even a Recent Version) that could be using Libre-Office?
(and why is there not a serious contender for an OpenSource version of EasyWorship??
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I fix PC's for an ISP in the bible belt of the USA, and I have to fix about 20 computers a day with viruses, and they've been to no porn sites, downloaded no torrents or mp3's or illegal software. But they ALL have Daily Bible Guide or some sort of religious shit that they threaten me not to remove.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
HAH!!! What religion comes to mind
You all for for this. A poor article with no link to the source report or idea of who they are quoting. Shoddy and poor reporting. Should not have been allowed on /.
Religion is worse for you than porn. (as if we didn't know that already)
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
*snort*.
You claim that if real proof of God's existence were offered then most Atheists would recant their positions.But you also seem to be assuming that the inverse is not true. I see no basis for thinking that a religious person would not recant his position if the opposite one were proven.
A useless argument since it is is impossible to conclusively prove the non-existence of a deity. You cannot prove a negative. The best you can say is that the existence of a deity is highly improbable. Further belief in a deity is an irrational act by definition. A theist would seem more likely than most to believe in something irrational even if it was provably false and in fact there is considerable evidence that people who believe in conspiracies tend to hold on to their beliefs even stronger when they are presented with falsifying evidence.
Neither position is currently proven, and I don't foresee that happening any time soon.
It cannot happen because much religious doctrine is not falsifiable. You literally cannot disprove it. You simply have the atheists saying that deities are absurdly improbable and the theists saying that they are going to believe in them anyway no matter how unlikely.
Atheism is the belief, without evidence, in the lack of existence of any deity
No, it is absence of belief in the existence of a deity. Important distinction. Non-belief does not equal absence of belief. Atheists are typically unconcerned with whether a deity exists or not. They typically doubt the existence of a deity for the same reason they doubt the existence of unicorns that fart pixie dust. They simply find it improbable to the point of absurdity. By happenstance this matches closely with the scientific method.
if you ask evidence for the premise, all "non personal evidence" I know of and were presented to me either in christian/islam/atheist forum by religious boil down to "i accept my belief premise therefore god". When you scratch the surface they all can be summarized to a circular argument "I accept god to exists therefore god exists" or special pleading (god is special so he must be the creator) the oldest of all is kalam cosmoplogical argument or first mover. The otehr kind of evidence is the personal one which are actually more precisely called "personal anecdote" and are about as worthless as it can go in the evidence scale.
But hey go ahead, present your evidence, maybe you will present us something which hasn't been rehashed in the last 1000 years , isn't circular or special pleading. You will excuse me if I don't hold my breath.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The sky existing is not evidence of a creator. At best it is only evidence of the universe existing, and that is no evidence of god existence, see critic of the Kalam cosmological argument. But seeing how you take the sky as evidence of god existing, that sound strangely like the exact same argument those watchtower guy tried with me. Is your next argument that we did not invent anything ? If yes I have bad news for you ,a s we did made matter out of nothing, and invented stuff which do not exist in the universe in natural state (Laser come to mind).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
But reading the link you provided shows that you foolishly mix up science's take one evidence with court's take one evidence and mix it "proof" with that. The usual vomit of definition goalpost moving that a small subset of religious people misuse. I suggest you go read this : go to wikipedia and read on "scientific evidence" , "karl popper" and so forth, then read the reference herein. Once you are finished maybe you will learn to do something else than vacuous specious argument on definition.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
People need to look at some terms before passing judgment.
"threats" - even in the article, this word is placed in quotes. It could be as simple as a tracking cookie. Still not desired, but not a virus.
"religion" - don't forget, this includes super-insane ones like scientology, which only exist for the purpose of scamming people out of money. It would be like if someone snuck a keylogger into Ubuntu, and an article came out that said Linux had a keylogger. Technically true, but a bit misleading.
The existence of evidence does not ensure proof.
True but if you gather enough evidence of sufficient quality, the difference between the two becomes negligible. For example relativity has been tested in countless ways and so far all the evidence points to the accuracy of the model. That does not mean that it cannot be proven incorrect in some manner tomorrow but it has been so well tested that for all practical purposes the body of evidence can be accepted as something akin to proof.
Regarding the existence of deities the accumulated evidence is extremely poor to non-existent. A scientific critical mind would take this as an indication that the existence of a deity is so unlikely as to be approaching proof of non-existence. They would not say it is actually proof, merely that the utter lack of evidence means that they should behave in a manner consistent with believing that a deity does not exist.
It blows my mind how many people who are so convinced that they are more intelligent than others, yet cannot grasp that evidence and proof are two different things.
Hint: There is a reason why prosecutors don't present proof in court; they present evidence. You aren't convinced by the evidence? Fine. Neither am I. Never the less, that is the evidence.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Who said it was my belief? ... and yes, that is often the basic way that people who review the evidence form the conclusion that it constitutes proof. Frankly, I think you are as big a moron as the guy who believes in the flying spaghetti monster. Both of you have formed conclusions where no conclusion is warranted. You see ... all of the evidence isn't in yet.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
So did they rewrite the "I Love You" virus to broadcast "Jebus Loves You?"
Maybe the viruses are written by the Amish or the Hassidic Jews. Rumour has it they hate technology -- they're just trying to save your soul from devilish computers. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Sure, all religions are getting money from their... "believers."
But how many religions are collecting money online?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Having worked on a site for a fairly large church, I observe that the entire development and administration team were volunteers. We happened to have some experienced people in the congregation, and our site was fairly well policed.
I suspect that smaller churches are even more likely to have all-volunteer staff, and more likely to have people who are trying their best but just don't know what they're doing. In a separate circumstance, I volunteered to host a website (I set up a common blog package on one of my web servers, skinned it for them, taught them how to use it, all for free on the condition that I didn't have to maintain it) for a smaller church, and observed that initially there was a lot of enthusiasm which drained off over time when they realized that updating and maintaining a web site is harder than they realized. The website was effectively abandoned and sat unused until their domain expired.
So go ahead and make your religious jokes; it's a free country. But the reason really is that one (porn) is a business and the other is not. And all that this entails.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I can't even begin to imagine what porn for viruses would look like.
And after the capcha for that anonymous post was "drunker", the repitition in the original comment is gone, just like earlier that day, I noticed that the "Score:" was absent from all the comments on one of the articles for about half an hour.
Memo to new management: test your code more before deploying to production
Facebook "Riskier Than Porn For Viruses"
Casteism
He is on that tree and he becomes sin. The holy, holy, holy one of God becomes sin.
“Cursed is every man who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law
to perform them.” Cursed.
Do you know what it means to be cursed? You won’t like this definition. It means that
something is so vile before a holy God, so loathsome even before all the inhabitants of
glory that the last thing that wicked man will hear when he takes his first step into hell is
all of creation standing to its feet and applauding God because God has rid the earth of
him.
L. Bob Rife, anyone?
ehintz