Security: Web Browsing, Search, and Online Ads Grow More Risky, Google Says

Web Browsing, Search, and Online Ads Grow More Risky, Google Says
InformationWeek (02/12/08) Claburn, Thomas
Google security engineer Niels Provos has found that Web browsing and searching are increasingly becoming channels for the distribution of malware. Provos says that more than 1 percent of all search results in the past few months contained at least one result that was believed to point to malicious content. He says that in the 18 months that Google has been tracking malicious Web pages, the company has found more than 3 million unique URLs on over 180,000 Web sites that attempt to install malware on users' computers. A recent paper Provos co-authored with Google colleague Panayiotis Mavrommatis and Johns Hopkins University computer scientists Moheeb Abu Rajab and Fabian Monrose blamed the problem in part on Internet advertising, Google's main source of revenue. Provos found that an average of 2 percent of malicious Web sites were delivering malware via Internet advertising, based on an analysis of about 2,000 known advertising networks. But since Internet ads target popular sites, search engine users are more likely to find them than that statistic suggests. The report noted that an average of 12 percent of overall search results that returned landing pages were associated with malicious content due to unsafe ads. Provos says there are no readily-apparent solutions to the problem.
Click Here to View Full Article