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Porn Sites More Infected Than Thought 170

Posted by timothy from the we-need-some-um-research-funds dept.
nk497 writes "Porn sites are five times as likely to host malware as previously thought, with 3.6% offering up a digital infection of some sort, according to a researchers who set up their very own adult sites for a new study. One reason for the high rate of malware is that the online porn industry makes use of affiliate programs, where one site will drive traffic to another in exchange for links, cash, or simply free pornographic material to use. Because such programs don't check who they're doing business with, and sites use disguised links and other clandestine methods to drive people to different pages, it's easy for criminals to abuse the system to spread malware. Researcher Gilbert Wondracek said, 'They inadvertently have created an ecosystem that can easily be abused on a large scale by cyber criminals, and that's worrying.'"
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Porn Sites More Infected Than Thought More

Porn Sites More Infected Than Thought

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  • That's ok... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kell Bengal ( 711123 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:37PM (#32551396)
    But that's ok... only ethically bad people use pornography, right? Right?

    What? You mean risks to one part of the internet make it less safe for the rest of us? Gasp!

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I used to be involved in the porn business (no, I didn't fuck any girls on camera but I did get a blowjob now and then). Let's just say far more than 3.6% of the girls I worked were infected. We don't have time to wait for her outbreak to clear up so we had to use odd angles, prop placement, or just keep her panties on.

      • I used to be involved in the porn business (no, I didn't fuck any girls on camera but I did get a blowjob now and then).

        Did you get paid fairly once your job responsibilities spiraled?

    • Re:That's ok... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Technician ( 215283 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @02:38PM (#32551812)

      You are here cruising Slashdot, where visitors can post links and such to stories, news articles, photos, and even porn sites posted by trolls. Just because you don't visit porn sites intentionally, dosen't mean someone with bad intent won't provide a link to a site. Mods often mod them down to troll before the general public provides lots of traffic.

      How do you know the link below is safe? The name of the site doesn't always indicate the contents.
      http://crazybuilders.com/ [crazybuilders.com] Note, the link is safe for work.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ObsessiveMathsFreak ( 773371 )

      But that's ok... only ethically bad people use pornography, right? Right?

      According to quite a few people, yes. Pornography exploits women by treating them as objects or "pieces of meat" for sinful men. There are many who hold such opinions and who argument and lobby strongly for pornography to be heavily censored or more preferable banned in order to protect women and especially children.

      Funnily enough, most of these same people beleive a woman's place is in the home, subservient to her husband, and largely

  • Simple one-person solution... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    For random web browsing on assorted sites, boot up from a Linux boot CD. Your entire OS will be in memory, nothing on your HD is touched.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And here I was thinking your "simple one-person solution" was to browse porn sites...

    • I'd rather use a condom.

    • For random web browsing on assorted sites, boot up from a Linux boot CD. Your entire OS will be in memory, nothing on your HD is touched.

      Except perhaps your data files.

    • Re:Simple one-person solution... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tubal-Cain ( 1289912 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @02:45PM (#32551866) Journal

      ...nothing on your HD is touched.

      What hard drive? ;-)

      • "What hard drive? ;-)"

        Someone with mod points mod up!

        Live CD/DVD booting is handy stuff, and will keep you going even if your hard disk dies.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You should ask your doctor about Viagra.
        • Be sure to ask him if you're healthy enough to have sex.

          (Then watch as he holds his chin, turns his head sideways a bit, and squints at you for a few seconds.)

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ArundelCastle ( 1581543 )

      Because when I want to take a ten minute break for random browsing, I *really* want to shut down everything I'm in the middle of doing and reboot twice.

      OTOH, if more porn sites said they were best viewed on Linux, I'm sure it would help market.. er... penetration.

    • For random web browsing on assorted sites, boot up from a Linux boot CD. Your entire OS will be in memory, nothing on your HD is touched.

      Unplug your HDD too. Otherwise your Linux CD can often mount your drive read/write, and if it has a vulnerable version of FF, you're owned since the default user usually has passwordless sudo privs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hduff ( 570443 )

      For random web browsing on assorted sites, boot up from a Linux boot CD. Your entire OS will be in memory, nothing on your HD is touched.

      No touching. Nice.

    • For random web browsing on assorted sites, boot up from a Linux boot CD. Your entire OS will be in memory, nothing on your HD is touched.

      Why not just use a virtual machine and not save changes? It would remove the issues around your local data, and be much faster without a reboot.

    • nothing on your HD is touched.

      Some of us have floppies.

    • For random web browsing on assorted sites, boot up from a Linux boot CD. Your entire OS will be in memory, nothing on your HD is touched.

      Doubt the average user would do that since they either 1)don't know its an option or 2)tend to be afraid of Linux. Now, being 'tech support' for my friends I get see to see what they are doing and where. I have to admit, its seems to be quite rare that they are going to porn sites since porn sites have gotten this bad press for causing system issues. It surprised me at first but then I found out where they were all getting their 'porn fix'. Pretty much every torrent site has a 'porn' section with a huge por

  • 3.6% (Score:5, Funny)

    by deadhammer ( 576762 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:42PM (#32551434)
    I'd better run a full scan just in case.

    Not like I've been to as many porn sites as would be necessary to be statistically likely to have gotten infected. Several times over. Nosiree!

  • Yea right (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrsteveman1 ( 1010381 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:45PM (#32551452)

    according to a researchers who set up their very own adult sites for a new study.

    Strictly for research purposes :)

    • Re:Yea right (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jack2000 ( 1178961 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @02:05PM (#32551580)
      We may joke all we want but it's about time porn distribution sites be managed by scientists. Meticulous classification of each video, maybe they can track usage statistics for fetishes etc.

      • Usage statistics for fetishes (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Vekseid ( 1528215 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @02:58PM (#32551972) Homepage
        I have experience in this area (see my sig). Harmless fetishes have a bit of a viral quality to them, sometimes following a pattern of Step 1) Revulsion Step 2) ??? Step 3) "You know, that's kind of hot."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Fumus ( 1258966 )

        Tags are the way to go for porn. The first person to open up a website creating lists of tag words based or MD5 sums for your porn file collection to import in a file tagging program will be rich.

        • Google:
          Gelbooru
          Danbooru
          rule34.paheal

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Fumus ( 1258966 )

            Or e641, but I was targeting video files. Hosting them costs bandwidth and uploading them by users just to get the tags is infeasible, thus the MD5 sums. I'm sure there are thousands of "most popular" files which are shared and not changed but have dozens of file names each. My idea is pretty much MusicBrainz Picard but for porn clips.

            • sharing protocols like DC++( and gnutela and countless others) already use TTH, there are TTH listing sites, basically what you ask for is already out there, it's just not specialized for porn. It will have the TTH-es/Magnet links for such files though.
      • Joke all you want, but they already are. :) What people jack off to already is closely tracked, even what porn works best for different countries and states. I can tell you already that what most people are interested in, is plain vanilla sex, but what matters is what kind of porn people are prepared to pay for and under what circumstances, and vanilla sex ain't it. Porn is just as competetive as any other internet business.

    • No doubt the professors/ researchers got some volunteers from the local coed community.
      (blinks)
      So where was this site again?

    • Re:Yea right (Score:5, Funny)

      by moderatorrater ( 1095745 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @02:57PM (#32551960)
      Coed: Why are you doing these things to me and taping it again, professor?
      Professor: For science!

  • Uhmm... no, duh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:46PM (#32551454) Journal

    Wow... what a shocker! Porn sites have lots of malware! Who woulda guessed?

    Really... who on earth is actually surprised by this?

    • Re:Uhmm... no, duh? (Score:5, Funny)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:50PM (#32551498) Homepage Journal

      Unsafe behavior leads to spread of viruses, film at eleven.

      (Eleven what?)

      • "Film at 11" explained (Score:3, Informative)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        Unsafe behavior leads to spread of viruses

        We knew that qualitatively. The article provides a quantitative measure, which allows drawing stronger conclusions about how to improve security against distribution of malware through ad networks. It's the difference between "are there infections" and "how much".

        film at eleven.

        (Eleven what?)

        Eleven hours after high noon. Before modern electronic news gathering, television news would often report the story at 6 PM and then have the "film" (footage shot on the scene) available for the 11 PM newscast.

        • Later on, they realized it's also a good marketing technique. Good for the pocket-lining, not necessarily for the customoproducts[1]. Keeps people drawn in until the money-shot. "Something you eat every day might kill you tonight! Find out more after your dinner is long since consumed!)

          [1] We need a new word for this. Television shows, web sites, newspapers, etc. make their money from advertising, but do provide an actual product or service to entice people to view the adverts. In other words, there a

        • Before modern electronic news gathering, television news would often report the story at 6 PM and then have the "film" (footage shot on the scene) available for the 11 PM newscast.

          I live in the Central Time Zone--my news is at 10, you insensitive clod!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hduff ( 570443 )

          film at eleven.

          (Eleven what?)

          Eleven hours after high noon. Before modern electronic news gathering, television news would often report the story at 6 PM and then have the "film" (footage shot on the scene) available for the 11 PM newscast.

          You could have said "o'clock PM" and saved 34 words, but this is Slashdot . . .

  • Weird (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:46PM (#32551460)

    Weird.

    That is WAY lower than I'd have expected.

  • Alternatively (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SamSim ( 630795 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:47PM (#32551468) Homepage Journal

    I don't know the stats, but maybe it's more correct to say that malware sites are more likely to host pornography than they are to fall into other categories? It's probably the best way to attract large streams of users.

    • Re:Alternatively (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @02:21PM (#32551698)

      Ya I think you need to work to separate sites that happen to have porn on them for various reasons, and sites who's business it is to sell porn. Just because a site has porn on it doesn't make it a porn site, at least not for a useful definition of the term. Now while I'm sure there are actual porn sites that are shady, I'm betting that there are far less than shady sites that try to use porn to lure people. After all, if your business is charging people a monthly fee for access, you want to keep them happy. Infecting them would be stupid. So you make a few bucks for the malware infection, but lose $20+ per month because the subscriber goes elsewhere.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by The Hatchet ( 1766306 )

      Well, there are tons of ways to attract large streams of users, but I think you are write hear. From what I have seen, most porn sites infected with maleware are literally stealing the porn from other sites, none of it is original, and you can never actually reach good porn, just links to porn that link to virii.

      To be honest, it sounds to me like the porn industry hates those bastards as much as we do.

      Also, having a stream of users that is not in a clear state of mind, frantically looking for something goo

  • Just like in real life... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GilliamOS ( 1313019 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:49PM (#32551482)
    You might catch something playing the field if you don't use protection!

  • Funny Off-Topic-But-Related Note (Score:5, Interesting)

    by no1home ( 1271260 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @02:00PM (#32551554)

    I work for a facility where a large number of our computers are for public use. We do not filter access (but if children are near someone known to be surfing porn, we have that person stop surfing such material). We all know some people choose to surf porn here, though it boggles the mind why.

    One day, I saw an older lady take a wet-nap style cleaning towel from the container we provide and begin cleaning the keyboard with it. I expressed my concern over using a WET-nap for an electronic part (they're for cleaning the desk, seat, hands, etc.).

    Lady: But you know they watch porn on these PCs, right?
    Me: Yes. We aren't allowed to filter the content. But cleaning the key...
    Lady: And you know these porn places are infected with all kinds of viruses, don't you?
    Me: ....?

    • Re:Funny Off-Topic-But-Related Note (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Aladrin ( 926209 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @02:29PM (#32551756)

      On the other hand, the kind of person that surfs for porn in a public place is the kind you want to clean up after, computer viruses or not. She's making a smart move, if for the wrong reason.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hduff ( 570443 )

        On the other hand, the kind of person that surfs for porn in a public place is the kind you want to clean up after, computer viruses or not. She's making a smart move, if for the wrong reason.

        She should just glove up before keyboarding if she's that concerned. That even reduces the risk of getting a cold. Places that provide public-use computers might even want to make gloves available.

    • But-Related (Score:4, Funny)

      by Ghoser777 ( 113623 ) <fahrenba@ma c . com> on Saturday June 12, 2010 @02:48PM (#32551886) Homepage

      Haha, you said but-related.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Who and where is this facility? :P

    • Maybe she was just pointing out that the computers could get viruses while also cleaning the keyboard to get rid of the germs/sperm/shame/whatever. Her words and her actions at the time aren't necessarily related. She might not be as dumb as we're assuming.

  • Bad Advertisers in General (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bieeanda ( 961632 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @02:06PM (#32551592)
    Porn sites aren't the only ones promiscuously mixing affiliates: there's a great deal of it going on with otherwise decent web advertisers as well, with results that range from the merely annoying to just as dangerous. It's very difficult to track the sources down beyond the first few layers because the whole thing is a bunged-up mess.

    • Monetizing adult sites is a difficult proposition. Selling material directly is difficult, with so much available for free. Setting up donations for adult sites is nearly impossible for a multitude of reasons, and mainstream advertisers like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft won't touch them. To top it all off, you are paying for even higher bandwidth costs.

      So when someone creates a large adult site, and starts feeling the pinch of hosting costs, the "Get 25 cents per visitor who installs our software! We're not

  • Gambling sites (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Grand Facade ( 35180 )

    probably take a close second to pron.

  • It's a ripe environment for scammers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Perp Atuitie ( 919967 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @02:19PM (#32551684)
    not only because of the sloppy tech, but because of the clientele. Lots of money flowing from folks trying to lose their real identities and who are less likely than most to try and seek investigations if they get scammed. Doesn't get better than this.

  • Hmmm... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Tubal-Cain ( 1289912 )

    Porn Sites More Infected Than Thought

    I'm pretty sure "thoughts" aren't subject to the same kinds of infections...

  • Right but they also have boobies! Maybe but me, but everything is about risk versus reward. Malware, boobies, malware, boobies... hmmm.... Seems worth it to me.

  • At first I thought it said "Porn Stars More Infected Than Thought"...

  • Is there any kind of sex that is safe? Real sex and netsex can result in an infection.

    • Re:safe sex (Score:5, Funny)

      by PatPending ( 953482 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @03:33PM (#32552172)

      Is there any kind of sex that is safe?

      My dog humping your leg?

      Anyway, here's a true story:

      When I was self-employed, my dog, Jake, used to lay on the floor by the check-out counter.

      One day while a guy was checking-out, Jake started licking his balls.

      Seeing this, the guy commented, "Gee, I wish I could do that!"

      I replied, "Go ahead--Jake won't mind.

      • Re:safe sex (Score:5, Funny)

        by PatPending ( 953482 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @03:44PM (#32552230)

        Clarification:

        One day while a guy was checking-out, Jake started licking his (Jake's) balls.

        • I was kind of freaked out at first. Trying to imagine a store where someone would put their (naked) balls on the check-out counter. For whatever insane reason I kept imaging it being the local hardware store, probably because there is a dog there too.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bazorg ( 911295 )
          I think most folks understood the first version. Next time you tell the joke you can write "Jake started licking its balls". :)

  • Selecting targets... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by N0Man74 ( 1620447 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @03:46PM (#32552240)

    I think most of us realize that scammers, cheaters, criminals, and fraudsters prefer 2 types of targets:

    1) Those who are safe/easy prey.
    2) Those who they can justify doing it to, or even deserve it.

    Because of too many people find porn to be embarrassing or shameful, some people may not want to report or fight back. They make themselves into easy marks. Also, it's easy to find people who want porn, especially free porn (because of embarrassment, lots of people don't want their identities and payments traced back to them for these sites).

    Also, because porn is perceived as such a shady thing, it's easy for some to justify screwing over these types of people.

    In the end it's about getting away with it without being plagued by a guilty conscious.

  • share! (Score:3, Funny)

    by portscan ( 140282 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @06:00PM (#32553046)
    from tfa: "More than 90% of the 35,000 pornographic domains analysed in the study were free sites."

    links, please.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by hduff ( 570443 )

      from tfa: "More than 90% of the 35,000 pornographic domains analysed in the study were free sites."

      links, please.

      Forget the links.

      Pics or it didn't happen.

  • Bullshit ! (Score:3, Informative)

    by eulernet ( 1132389 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @06:47PM (#32553340)

    One reason for the high rate of malware is that the online porn industry makes use of affiliate programs, where one site will drive traffic to another in exchange for links, cash or simply free pornographic material to use.

    No, it's totally wrong.
    It's simply because the most dangerous ads are the ones which pay the most.

    Malware authors know that if they want to infect sites, they just have to propose more money than Google's Adsense and similar companies.
    They'll recover this money after a few infections.

    Also, I'm pretty sure that a lot of malware authors create free porn sites, just to avoid paying for ads.
    I saw that on a lot of cracks collections sites.

  • Does it correlate with the incidence of STD's? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gatkinso ( 15975 ) on Saturday June 12, 2010 @09:10PM (#32553946)

    That would be interesting.

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