Google Keeps Tabs on Dangerous Sites

Move over Symantec... Time to pack it in McAfee...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6645895.stm
from WinCustomize Forums

According to research done by Google, 1 in 10 web pages contain malicious code that could be used to infect a user's PC.  This based on a survey 4.5 million sites out of the billions crawled regularly by Google's web search spider.  In that number, around 450,000 were capable of "drive-by-downloads", sites that install malicious code without the user knowing.  Another 700,000 pages were considered capable of compromising a PC via other methods.

The research being done by Google stands a chance of not only indexing dangerous sites, but begin to paint a picture of how hackers are trying to compromise systems, what trends are emerging, and hopefully find ways to proactively block and counteract such attacks.

Could Google be the Anti-Virus company of the Internet?

3,122 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Good luck google - they should look in the mirror more often!

SGT  
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It's one thing to list dangerous sites....another to provide links to same in search results. Google, if you're sincere about combating/eliminating these threats, simply refuse point blank to refer users to them. Behave responsibly rather than a corporate money making machine, regardless of the expense/consequences to others.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top

So....what happens when they 'flag' a site incorrectly?

More money for lawyers, that's what....

Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It's one thing to list dangerous sites....another to provide links to same in search results. Google, if you're sincere about combating/eliminating these threats, simply refuse point blank to refer users to them. Behave responsibly rather than a corporate money making machine, regardless of the expense/consequences to others.


Absolutely! spot on.  
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
So....what happens when they 'flag' a site incorrectly?
More money for lawyers, that's what....

False positives are an inevitability, but I doubt it would be much worse than when an anti-virus application does the same thing, both in frequency of occurrences and the owner's response. Hopefully it wouldn't be too difficult to become unflagged. I suppose those that are confirmed should have a different flag than those discovered by some heuristics.