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McAfee Picks the Most Dangerous TLDs
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Jun 04, 2008 11:00 AM
from the all-fear-dot-vg dept.
from the all-fear-dot-vg dept.
CWRUisTakingMyMoney writes "Companies that assign addresses for Web sites appear to be cutting corners on security more when they assign names in certain domains than in others, according to a report to be released Wednesday by antivirus software vendor McAfee Inc. McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are .hk, .cn, and .info. Of all .hk sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of .cn sites and 11.7 percent of .info sites that way. A little more than 5 percent of the sites under the .com domain — the world's most popular — were identified as dangerous."
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.cx (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
They're just slow (Score:3, Funny)
But what about .nu? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:But what about .nu? (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks dude, that's 12 extra therapy sessions for me.
Parent
Only on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:But what about .nu? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:But what about .nu? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Which is more dangerous, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad math = bad reporting.
Word Problem Alert (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad math = bad reporting.
You're making the argument that what really matters is the total number of malicious sites in each domain, not the fraction of sites within a domain that are malicious.
Clearly, however, the fraction is the more important metric. Consider a silly analogy:
There are 100 violent criminals in my local jail out of a total population of 200. There are 1000 violent criminals running free in Hawaii out of a total population of 1 million. When choosing a safer place for a vacation, by your logic, I'd pick my jail, since the total number of offenders is lower. 50% of my fellows would be violent criminals. By my logic, I'd pick Hawaii, where there would be more criminals, but they'd only make up 0.1% of the people around me. I prefer my odds.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
No, that's not clear. That's only even plausible if you restrict all of the sites you ever interact with to ones with a certain domain. No one does that.
Re:Word Problem Alert (Score:4, Informative)
He's right. If you pick a single site to interact with, the total number of sites that share that domain doesn't matter. His analogy is spot on.
In effect, he defined Bayes' rule for you.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why the hell... (Score:5, Funny)
Not helping things (Score:3, Interesting)
Why should we care which TLDs are more likely to contain malware? Are we actually going to learn anything from making random correlations like this? Obviously there are also plenty of scammers at "less dangerous" TLDs and plenty of honest folks at the "dangerous" ones, and there are of course vastly more precise ways to determine the safety of a site than by its TLD.
So of what value is this distinction then, apart from an amusing press release to
not their problem (Score:5, Insightful)
um since when is that the registrar's responsibility? they just point a domain name at an IP address-- that's the extent of the service.
Re:not their problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Define "Dangerous" (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems like they kind of mashed the 2 together, but that is McAfee, so I would expect them to exaggerate the dangers of browsing without McAfee.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
sorry, but i just don't get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
here, if we are to register domain names, especially
the possible exception would be
Re:sorry, but i just don't get it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Because there are no more good dot-coms. (Score:5, Funny)
Age of website? (Score:5, Insightful)
I used Site advisor once.. (Score:4, Informative)
Chinese domains (Score:5, Funny)
Stats To Drive Sales? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of companies are in the business of registering domain names; some are large and well known, while others are small and less reputable, offering their services on the cheap and with flimsy or no background checks to lure in more customers.
I've never had a registration questioned beyond my payment information...nor would I expect any sort of deeper investigation into my desire to register. Granted, most hosting providers specifiy restrictions on content/usage, but TLD registrars? Not in my experience at least...perhaps someone else can enlighten me?
No
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Excessive" pop-up ads? How about any pop-up ads?
Use Linux/Firefox and nobody gets hurt... (Score:2, Insightful)
of course they're dangerous (Score:3, Funny)
My TLD is pretty safe (Score:2)
Numbers in names (Score:2)
Re:Numbers in names (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
lies, damned lies, and mcafee (Score:3, Informative)
Note I'm pulling all numbers out of thin air for demonstration purposes, I've no idea if these are the actual numbers but it's safe to assume that McAfee spent less than half the time and effort on their report than I did in writing this comment.
Re:lies, damned lies, and mcafee (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider this:
Bag 1: 7 of 10 marbles are blue
Bag 2: 35 of 100 marbles are blue
There are more blue marbles in bag 2, but you are far more likely to pick a blue marble in the first bag.
The point of the article is: how much of an indication is it that a
Parent
List is incomplete (Score:2, Funny)
Interesting bits (Score:5, Interesting)
One other interesting note is that .05% of .gov's are listed as dangerous. So is that like from when the www.nsa.gov website left that tracking cookie on your computer or is there a actual government website out there that is actually dangerous to visitors?
Re:Where can I get a list of these TLD to block ou (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Seems like its only purpose is to garner registration fees.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Where can I get a list of these TLD to block ou (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Where can I get a list of these TLD to block ou (Score:2)
cz
info
nl
ru
st
up
id
net
biz
org
Re:Where can I get a list of these TLD to block ou (Score:4, Funny)
Don't forget .ng (Nigeria). I don't think anything good ever comes from that domain.
.no - Norway
.sh - Saint Helena
.it - Italy
sherlock
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
hang your head in shame.
5%, I'm surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how the 5% was chosen? I mean how does one actually sample this in a meaningful way. For example, suppose one enumerated every possible webpage and sampled those randomly. Or, given that that is impossible, suppose one enumerated every TLD and samlpled those.
This still would not accord with user experience. User experience is you start from some place on the web and click outward following links. Usually the starting place is some aggregator like Google.
Following that kind of trajectory is not the same as uniformly sampling TLDs or webapges, but is how users interact.
I can say with certainty that 5% of the links I click are not "dangerous".
Parent
Re:5%, I'm surprised (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure they are selling security software, but why don't you at least check it out before shooting your mouth off?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The robust-scanner one, almost certainly. This is likely an easier job than hardening an interactive web-browser. Their robot has no need to execute anything it comes across, so downloaded script needn't be allowed to execute anything, ever. It has no need to render any of the media, so none of the image-library attacks can work. They don't have to keep anything that they scan, so no save-to-disc code. In short, they can maintain exceptionally strong separation between their scanner and its host.
If the