Future Hack: New Cybersecurity Tool Predicts Breaches Before They Happen 33
An anonymous reader writes: A new research paper (PDF) outlines security software that scans and scrapes web sites (past and present) to identify patterms leading up to a security breach. It then accurately predicts what websites will be hacked in the future. The tool has an accuracy of up to 66%. Quoting: "The algorithm is designed to automatically detect whether a Web server is likely to become malicious in the future by analyzing a wide array of the site's characteristics: For example, what software does the server run? What keywords are present? How are the Web pages structured? If your website has a whole lot in common with another website that ended up hacked, the classifier will predict a gloomy future. The classifier itself always updates and evolves, the researchers wrote. It can 'quickly adapt to emerging threats.'"
66%? Worthless trash... (Score:4, Interesting)
I can predict for most sites that they will be hacked eventually, because they do not have anything resembling a secure set-up. But predicting when? That is impossible. Likely this tool gets even its pathetic 66% only dues to cherry-picked test data (also known as "lying" in scientific circles).