Study Notes Decline in Internet Spyware 94
Zoner12 writes "LiveScience magazine is running an interesting article about a new study detailing the extent and seriousness of spyware on the Internet, finding that it is still prevalent but declined significantly. The scary statistic is that 1 in 62 websites visited distributes malware. Kind of disheartening that this is a decline."
Interesting view on market self-regulations (Score:5, Insightful)
I truly believe that Spyware has always had a market provision for it -- to find a way to capitalize on this "new" medium. Initially spyware may have been created by the big media companies -- Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve and the rest. They never had any opportunity to really sell the informaion of their users, so most of them gave up the flagrant "violations" of user privacy. Of course ISPs likely still have ways to make money on user information, but not like they thought they would.
Spyware was then taken over by individuals and foreign companies who might have been duped into thinking there was a profit. Most spam comes in from out of the U.S., but the value of spam has decreased majorly in the last year -- not due to laws or government regulations but through the end user finding ways to avoid even seeing spam. I think by next year spam will decrease greatly and in the next 5 years we'll have forgotten it entirely.
Spyware is now on that last phase, as well. With firewalls and spyware-detecting software, the power of spyware is decreased majorly. As operating systems are released that are aware of spyware and the implications of being known as a spyware-enabling operating system, manufacturers will take a big step in combating spyware before the fact, rather than after the fact. Yet the spyware will be beaten down by market choices not by government action or mandates.
By the time the law is created, it is already outdated. 10 years from now SPAM and spyware laws will still be on the books, but the market will have provided users with the proper way to fight it. As the next generation of users is accustomed to requesting information in the the way they want it, spyware companies and spammers will have to find new ways to make a profit: they won't be able to trick the next generation as easily.
Yet along with the market ending spyware, the market also seems to be trying to find ways to destroy the previous financial structure of information -- advertising. I use Google AdSense to monetize most of my sites, but it would never truly pay the bills. If I didn't have people volunteering money, I'd have to look into new ways to pay for my time. I actually prefer not to charge for information, I'd rather get my thoughts and opinions out in the market so that I can back up my billable rate by offering people the knowledge that I spend a lot of time researching my businesses. Having to find a new way to pay for media you want (TV, music, whatever) will be the unintended consequence of our market decision to get rid of all advertising and ad-ware type of programs. It'll be interesting to see how quickly the market recovers, though, as it always does: to give the best balance between the needs of party A (the producer) and party B (the consumer).
Re:Interesting view on market self-regulations (Score:5, Interesting)
I blew up and started obliterating every add I could when Drudge Report went around Firefox's built-in popup blocking. Prior to that, I'd been blocking images from ad servers that served women in swimsuits (or less), since I won't look at a woman dressed like that unless I'm married to her. That meant I was missing most of Slashdot's ads.
I've never had any qualms about blocking the ads, and have been saying for a long time that we'll just she a shift in the "ecology" of website funding. Some will continue to be funded by ads, more will become funded by donations or subscriptions. Some will continue to be funded by private individuals or companies.
I keep hearing two-bit webmasters on slashdot prophesy Armageddon on the web because of people like me. Yet life has continued to go on, and it's nice to see someone putting out content on the Internet who does not think that ad blocking is going to cause the sky to fall.
I run only a handful of websites; one is supported by user donations, and the others are not yet big enough to need anything other than about $10/year from me.
I'm a much happier man since I started skipping all ads on the Internet. We also quit watching television other than recorded shows where we could skip the ads, or purchased movies with no ads (other than at the beginning, sigh...). Much, much happier, all around.
to the BBC yeah yeah yeah (Score:2)
Re:Interesting view on market self-regulations (Score:1)
In a few years the market will have legitimized spyware (Gator^H^H^H^H Claria is already semi "legit") so that way it will look as spyware is reduced when infact it's no longer spyware but "useful programs that are funded by advertising" PR bullshit that scumware companies like Claria and 180 crap spew.
But, I think that in the future, if spyware will decline, it will not be attributed to the market giving people tools (those already exi
Re:Interesting view on market self-regulations (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, we may have forgotten about it in 5 years, but that doesn't mean it's gone away
I'm not worried about how many spam messages end up in my mailbox; I have all kinds of filters and things set up to prevent that. What I'm worried about is the sheer amount of traffic being sent over the internet backbone fibers related to spam. All that data is clogging the system, even if filters at the message's destination make it so the data never arrives in a mailbox. Lots of this spam is being sent by zombie machines, and will continue to be sent long after spam is no longer profitable, which is highly unlikely to ever happen. Even a single purchase of a product justifies the cost of sending millions of messages.
If all the spam in the network is completely eliminated all at once, would the internet speed up? Would my downloads be faster, and my bandwidth wider, and my gaming lag smaller, and my surfing more productive?
How much bandwidth are we truly wasting on spam? I'd love to see some up-to-date statistics on this.
Re:Interesting view on market self-regulations (Score:3, Insightful)
I could have said the same thing about viruses 10 years ago thanks to antivirus software, yet they are still there and more thriving than ever.
In other news (Score:1, Funny)
A decline in study notes...? (Score:2, Funny)
Whenever I need to brush-up on my 19th Century history or Applied Calculus, I always read the source-code of spyware first...
Re:A decline in study notes...? (Score:1)
Re:A decline in study notes...? (Score:1)
rise of spyware killers (Score:2)
Re:rise of spyware killers (Score:1)
IE 6 security (Score:2)
When IE 6 is trusted to the exclusion of all else... be scared.. be very scared! :-)
I don't understand... (Score:2, Interesting)
Are not all of these things in the end for comercial gain?
What companies profit from this?
Are any legit? Or do they all offer you penis enlargement?
If so why not name and shame them?
Of the ones that are a scam, who buys penis enlargment pills for 1.99 or cheap viagra? Spam wouldnt be profitable if no one bought any products that it advertises?
Any idea what percentage of
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2)
That's a common myth about spam. Spam will always be profitable as long as you can convince a single client (penis enlargement or Viagra reseller) that it will be a successful marketing campaign for a minimal cost. If 10 billion e-mails go out, and 100 click-throughs are generated (95 of which may have been accidental) along with 0 sales, you can say "I drove 100 visitors to your site, if you had a 1:33 conversion ratio you would ha
The Rise of Firefox (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The Rise of Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
I think SiteAdvisor [siteadvisor.com] is also a valuable tool in this context.
Re:The Rise of Firefox (Score:2)
Re:The Rise of Firefox (Score:2)
Re:The Rise of Firefox (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Rise of Firefox (Score:2)
Just shifting... (Score:2)
I predict they'll soon have their cheap security cameras routed through face recognition software under whatever security pretense bullshit so they can mark every face's buying habits.
Spyware v2.0 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Spyware v2.0 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Spyware v2.0 (Score:2)
evolving fashions (Score:2)
No longer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Porn sites? Spyware.
Warez sites? Spyware.
Mistyped URL sites? Spyware.
Spam email? Spyware.
So if I break into your house in the middle of the night and offer you great savings on various pills, and you physically have to force me out of the house..is it still breaking and entering? I mean you wouldn't have 'let' me in if you didn't want my great offers!
If spyware/adware is put into ANYTHING that isn't an obvious executable file, it should be labelled deceptive and illegal. Whoever then created said product should be punished, or the website's abuse department should be contacted (spammed by unique sources) with requests to take it down.
Re:No longer.. (Score:1)
Sample space.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pick the right sites and you can make it one out of three or one in a million.
Re:Sample space.... (Score:2)
"Legend: P - porn, U - popups, I - installs, F - non english language, C - clear". Virtually all of them are "PUI". However, disabling javascript and popups and not using IE make them benign.
Re:Sample space.... (Score:3)
Not all spyware is bad! (Score:2, Funny)
Obsolete to spammers (Score:1)
Not that surprising (Score:3)
Almost 2% of websites distribute spyware! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Almost 2% of websites distribute spyware! (Score:2)
Re:Almost 2% of websites distribute spyware! (Score:1)
Spyware down, but profit still there (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe the decline can be linked to the fact that now these companies are turning around and offering consulting for the problems they helped propogate?
Re:Spyware down, but profit still there (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Spyware down, but profit still there (Score:3)
1 in 62 sites (Score:1)
- illegal downloads
- cellphone ringtones
- cheesy screensavers
- dumb ass hacker/cracker/whatever wannabe shite
I'd say that's declining rapidly, but not fast enough.
PS. I bet we see some people say Spyware isn't declining, Firefox is growing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnne
Study Notes (Score:3, Funny)
Statistics (Score:1, Funny)
1 in 62? Distribution? (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, if the sites which inject spyware are all warez/download/music sharing sites, I'd not be surprised.
If, say, reputable news sites (like commercial papers and TV networks) are included in that number, then it's a lot scarier.
There's a huge difference between knowing that in some of the "more shady areas of the Web" (as the aricle puts it) are the main sources, and knowing that even the good guys have this stuff.
When I go into the shady areas of the web, I know where I'm going, and I take much more precautions. When I'm going to a known, and assumedly benign site, I might be a little less paranoid.
Not just the dark alleys! (Score:2)
Link to study (Score:1)
Link to the Actual Study (Score:5, Informative)
I tracked it down because I was wondering if malicious cookies were concidered malware in the 1 in 62 statistic, which would make it not so surprizing. I actually found that the metric they were using was much more limited the blurb suggestests. The number of sites merely distributing spyware was actually 1 in 20. The 1 in 62 statistic refered to sites that went further and used drive-by infection techniques, ie sites that used a flaw in the browser to modify files or registry items when you visited the site! See section 4, starting on page 9 for detailed methodology.
Re:Link to the Actual Study (Score:2, Informative)
"While the absolute number of spyware-infected executables dropped substantially between the crawls,this is due primarily to a single site whose number of infected executables declined from 1,776 in May to 503 in October. Except for that site, the amount of spyware we found did not change appreciably over the five-month period between our two crawls."
Re:Link to the Actual Study (Score:2)
On another note, it would appear that the web is a vaste warzone/wasteland. Not counting the one in 62 sites mentioned previously, many of the websites that are left are just plain old garbage. It is a wonder that anyone uses the web at all. Thankfully, there is s
I call BS. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I call BS. (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's worth doing twice, it's worth scripting.
Seriously, why wouldn't you write a Windows script that would intall all the programs, run all the commands, clean out the registry keys, and reboot every once in a while? Then when people bring in their computers, you just toss in the CD or USB key with the script, fire it up, and head back to Slashdot.
Re:I call BS. (Score:2)
Re:I call BS. (Score:2)
Re:I call BS. (Score:2)
Re:I call BS. (Score:2)
Re:I call BS. (Score:2)
Re:I call BS. (Score:2)
Re:I call BS. (Score:2)
Regardless, spyware is worse than ever. Retail anti-spyware products are a joke. There are dozens of clients who have Norton Internet Security Anti-Spyware edition who are infected up the wazoo. I'll go out on a limb and say that people think they're invincible with these kinds of programs installed, when they're
Deep Cover (Score:2)
Re:Deep Cover (Score:2, Interesting)
I say 2 years until any 12-year old script kiddie that took a Visual Basic tutorial online can download a
On the other hand, look at spam originally. Nothing prevented a mass mailer propagated with addresses harvested from websites. When it became a pain in the ass, stuff started blocking it. Programs
Websites visited.... (Score:1)
I can vouch for this... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's one reason for this decline that's not mentioned in the brief article (though it may be in the paper referenced): users are actually getting smarter. Strange as that may sound to your average BOFH, I do think that many users are growing a clue (and no 2x4s were even needed).
I know that almost every residential customer, as they're writing out a check for $100 or $200 for spyware removal, asks two questions: "How did this happen?" and "What do I do to keep this from happening again?". My techs and I are more than happy to answer these questions.
I've suggested a broad range of solutions (there's no one-size-fits-all answer here):
This last one is tough: some seemingly innocuous sites try to force installs on you. For example, I was trying to find the name of a song by some band, so I googled a snippet of lyrics and hit the first site returned in the result. Boom! "Would you like to install Vomit Cursor? [yes] [yes]". A client's teenaged daughter wanted to download "Doll Buddy Icons" for AIM (something to do with Bratz dolls and people on your buddy list, I think). Wham, 450 malware objects installed in ten minutes (I tracked the source by comparing the file dates of the dodgy
When you tell clients that there's no free lunch on the internet and that there are companies whose business model consists of taking control of your computer, you can actually see enlightenment happen. The heavens open up, angels play harps, and everyone is bathed in a warm glowing light. Pretty cool when this happens.
k.
Re:I can vouch for this... (Score:2)
Just anecdotal... (Score:1)
Info on IE vs Firefox (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gribble/papers/ spycrawler.pdf [washington.edu]
For comparison, we also crawled and examined the new set of 45,000 URLs that we generated in October. During this crawl, both browser configurations observed a significantly lower number of drive-by download attacks than we found in May. For example, in May, 5.9% of the crawled URLs performed cfg y attacks and 1.2% of sites performed cfg n attacks; in October, these percentages dropped to 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively.
We also examined whether the Firefox browser was susceptible to drive-by installations. We found that only 0.08% of examined URLs performed a drive-by download installation, but all of these required user consent in order to succeed. We found no drive-by attacks that exploited vulnerabilities in Firefox.
Basically what they did was see spyware that was installed by just visiting the website, with firefox no spyware was installed without any user interaction, and only 36 pieces got installed after the user agreed to it. This is from a sampling of 45,000 sites.
On IE, in October, 180 sites installed spyware with no user interaction, and 270 installed spyware with user interaction.
One of many reasons I use firefox.
seems somewhat incomplete... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:seems somewhat incomplete... (Score:2)
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gribble/papers/ spycrawler.pdf
[washington.edu]
Re:seems somewhat incomplete... (Score:1)
Could it really be true? (Score:1)
Dust off those references (Score:2)
it can also perform such malicious tasks as gathering personal data or using your modem to dial costly toll numbers.
They're referring, of course, to the infamous XXX dialer malware which installs itself if you try to get your jollies via certain videoconferencing activities. That's at least five years old at this point.
What qualifies as journalism nowadays?
Re:Dust off those references (Score:1)
"Journalism"??? You mis-spelled advertisement...
I recently read a review in a Ziff-Davis publication that praised HTPC / Mini-ITX PC as containing "no moving parts". Sadly, the article's photo was a direct shot of the motherboard and power supply, with an extremely notice **fan** on the power supply. (And yes, the PSU did come with the item being reviewed)
I can only conclude that the "reviewer" never even physically saw the item he "reviewed".
Rates are meaningless (Score:2)
Extrapolations of trends based on such rates have second order meaninglessness.
If you want to look at something meaningful, periodically sample user computers and figure out the installation rate of malware. I expect the rate has gone down though, because people vulnerable to spyware have countermeasures in place.
Ah, but the outliers make the news. (Score:1)
Time for a switch? (Score:1)
How were domains counted? (Score:1)
This is usually the behavior I exhibit: Site 1 is alpha site, it contains the actual exploit code. Sites A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, ... (you see where I am going) all link back to Site 1 in a 1x1 iframe or something. They do not contain their own exploit code, that is Site 1's job.
beehappyy.biz, now down, was home to 4 exploits one the same page (some really, really, really old and negated by in
WTF Disheartening? (Score:2)
Why the hell is this disheartening? This means that Windows users *MIGHT* have less to worry about, especially as far as Joe Sixpack is concerned. Just the article summary alone tells me 'Decline in spyware/malware = better chances for Windows users to stay the hell alive without needing to call tech support.'
Saying that malware/spyware decreasing is 'disheartening' gives me the impression that someone works for the Anti-Spyware business and is trying to g
Re:WTF Disheartening? (Score:2)
Re:WTF Disheartening? (Score:1)
why cant google tag these sites/pages .... (Score:1)