Regular Domains Have More Malware Than Porn Sites 122
SnugglesTheBear writes "New research pours scorn on the comforting but erroneous belief that Windows surfers who avoid smut and wares on the Web are likely to avoid exposure to malware. A study by free anti-virus firm Avast found 99 infected legitimate domains for every infected adult website. In the UK, Avast found that more infected domains contained the word 'London' than the word 'sex.' Among the domains labeled as infected by Avast was the smartphones section of the Vodafone UK website. The mobile phone operator's site contained a malicious JavaScript redirect script that attempted to take advantage of an unpatched Windows Help and Support Centre flaw (CVE-2010-1885) to infect the machines of visiting surfers."
makes sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
there's competition in the porn world... they want to make money.
vodafone, like most carriers, will be making money no matter what.... thanks to monopolies, duopolies, market segmentation and such.
this creates a lazy attitude towards security, among other things.
is anyone surprised by this, really?
"sex" is too vanilla to sell (Score:5, Insightful)
In the UK, Avast found that more infected domains contained the word 'London' than the word 'sex.'
Maybe it's due to my weird fetishes, but none of the porn sites I visit actually contain the word "sex".
What are the percentages? (Score:5, Insightful)
But what are the percentages of said catagories infected?
What percentage of porn sites have malware?
What percentage of non-porn sites have malware?
If the percentages are high enough for a category, it is a good idea to avoid that category, even if it is a tiny percentage of total sites.
That doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that still hold true in terms of traffic? It doesn't matter how many sites have malware, it matters how often those sites are visited. One high volume site with malware does more damage than a thousand sites that no one visits.
How is this useful stats? (Score:2, Insightful)
"A study by free anti-virus firm Avast found 99 infected legitimate domains for every infected adult web site."
Maybe there are just 99 regular websites to every porn site out there.
There's a reason for that (Score:5, Insightful)
People in the porn business are in it to make money. For the most part, they work together. Ever notice how they all link/ad/popup to more sites all within their clique?
There's more money in repeat subscriptions than regular joe getting infected with Malware.
Due to stereotypes? (Score:2, Insightful)
Huge conflict of interest here. (Score:2, Insightful)
A "study" done by an anit-virus firm finds that there are a lot of infected web sites out there. Regardless of the validity of the study, it seems that there is a HUGE conflict of interest here. A company in the business of protecting users for malicous websites publishes a study showing that there are a lot of malicous websites out there.
Re:What are the percentages? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The question is (Score:2, Insightful)
Further actual numbers mean little - what percentage of porn sites are infected (or deliberately take malware related action) as opposed to legitimate sites?
Exactly. 99 regular sites infected to 1 porn site infected is rather telling if there are 1000 times more regular sites, which would mean that you have a ten-fold increase in risk on porn sites. As usual, this is a non-story that boils down to nothing more than a press release for Avast: "You're at risk! Buy our crap which will slow down your computer and probably won't detect much anyways!"
Re:Java Issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The question is (Score:3, Insightful)
What's more, I imagine mostly lonely guys visit porn sites. And who are lonely guys? Geeks!
Well, you'd be imagining wrong, because the correct answer to the question who visits porn sites is EVERYONE.
Am I the only one who isn't surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
Am I the only one who isn't surprised? I would expect porn sites to be less infected than regular sites.
Admins and designers who work on such sites are more likely, than those that work in more "innocent" areas, to be exposed to the lower end of human behaviour through using spammers and ropey affiliate schemes to draw in traffic. If you are aware of what nefarious things you do (or could do) and more importantly what your competition do or could do then you are going to be more clued up on how careful you need to be with site security.
Ignoring the lower end of human behaviour (there must be at least one or two porn sites out amongst the millions that don't spam/crack/what-ever to make an extra few $), to be successful financially a porn site need to be secure, otherwise people would just hack in and take the content for nothing. It is simply good business for them to be security concious, especially the smaller outfits/franchises that are run by a small team (where the designers/programmers/admins are more likely to be directly affected in the wage-slip if the site is hacked). Designers, programmers and admins working on a small and possible not very sensitive part or a much larger organisations output (like the vodafone example mentioned) may not be as directly aware of such issues. The "smartphones section" of their site, assuming this is a phone/contract sales area, is not likely to have cracking types trying to steal content. Now a site (or part there of) that is offering paid-for downloadable content I would expect to be "safer" than other areas for the same reason as a porn site: the content needs to be protected more than the content of a brochure page.