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Torrent Sites Earned $70M After Dropping Malware On Visitors (softpedia.com)
jones_supa writes: One in three torrent sites is spreading malware, claims a recent joint report (PDF) from Digital Citizens Alliance and RiskIQ, which compiled data from over 800 sites. Most of the time, the sites expose visitors to drive-by attacks that silently download malicious files on computers without any user interaction. These types of attacks are usually carried out through malvertising campaigns. It turns out that this is actually a good business for the operators of the pirate sites: depending on traffic, they can make between $200 and $5,000 per day. In total it is estimated that this type of covert agreement between malware distributors and pirate site operators has pocketed the latter about $70 million per year.
This report is from something called the "Digital Citizens Alliance". Sounds good, right? Sounds like a bunch of pro-freedom net citizens protecting all of our rights, yes?
Would it surprise you to learn that the DCA is a lobbying group involved in trying to get Google to take down search results? Here's a sentence from their materials:
Does anyone else smell an agenda here?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Details like:
What internet browser did they use?
What basic security measures did they use?
What does "Exposure" mean? Did the malware actually infect the computers exposed or did their security catch it?
What sites did they test?
I note things like how this very article LIES: 55% are user-initiated downloads, only 45% are drive-by downloads! Or how, while it is true that you're 28 times more likely to be "exposed" to malware on the piracy sites. . .it's a rise from 1 in 333 to 1 in 12. And again. . .Did those computers exposed actually get infected by the malware, or do basic security measures stop it?
what operating system?
Flash or Java vulnerabilities?
nuthin useable.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.