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Knowledge is power, and Spiderman always said that great power came with great responsibility, but what we're learning this week isn't making us feel proactive -- instead it's making us want to don our tinfoil hats and curl up in a ball in the deepest corner of our darkest closets. A day after Google filled us in on just how many speech-squashing takedowns it gets from the U.S. government, the company pulled the curtain even farther with a blog post this morning sharing just how many badware-peddling sites are online. It's a lot.
Niels Provos of Google's security team laid out hard figures in his post. Here's the scariest bit:
We find about 9,500 new malicious websites every day. These are either innocent websites that have been compromised by malware authors, or others that are built specifically for malware distribution or phishing. While we flag many sites daily, we strive for high quality and have had only a handful of false positives.
Google's doing its part to try and protect users from installing nasty viruses via its various warning systems, which is good, because it sounds like millions of folks are just begging for a Trojan. Provos explains that 12 to 14 million search results carry Google's "This site may be compromised" warning each and every day, with an additional 300,000 downloads being flagged as malicious by Chrome's download protection service.
Provos' post breaks things down even further and explains just how many malicious sites contain malware, which are phishing sites, etc. I'd venture that most of the sites wouldn't trip up a tech-savvy surfer, however, especially one with an up-to-date AV app.
The company sends out thousands of notifications to webmasters and ISPs on a daily basis to spread the word and maybe clean things up a bit, but 9,500 new malicious sites a day can't be easy to combat.
So, aside from your trusty tinfoil hat, what technology and programs do you use to make sure you're staying safe while browsing the tubes?
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h e x e n
June 20, 2012 at 4:23am
I tend not to use anything anymore. I back up my save files on games, pictures, music and such, and just reformat.
Once a year, quick and clean.
Not visiting odd, screwball sites helps as well. The interwebz can be a dangerous place, so don't wander too far. Dark evil awaits in the deepest basements, where the oldest of servers reside.
livebriand
June 19, 2012 at 9:32pm
I use WOT, ABP (malicious ads), Ghostery (malicious scripts), MSE, and Malwarebytes (on-demand scanner). Surprisingly enough, I've found MSE cleaning java threats from a website I just visited, even though the site I was just browsing is legit. (perhaps there's a malicious ad?)
John Pombrio
June 19, 2012 at 2:18pm
Nice thing is that this is from a source that is NOT associated with anti-virus companies. Scary stuff.
I recommend World Of Trust(WOT) to help filter bad sites as well as using Google as a search engine. My son has had a lot less malware attacks since I installed it on Firefox for him.
Brad Chacos
June 19, 2012 at 11:10am
Bam! Ninja edited. Crud, I just tipped you off to my mad ninja editing skills.
