Google To Identify Malware Sites In Search Results

[encyclo]

From: CNET news.com [news.com.com]

Google has started warning people when search results could potentially lead them to malicious code. The search giant is using data from the Stop Badware Coalition to flag sites that are potentially host to malicious software. (...) People who attempt to go to a Web site that has been identified as risky by the coalition are taken to a warning page.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Well it won't stop it but it should help.

[mcskoufis]

Right... For a month now I am submitting potentially dangerous sites through the spam report (and recently through sitemaps) and it still exists in the index with absolutely no such indication.

[Angonasec]

There's a Firefox extension from a well know security firm that does this with all the SEs serps.

I wonder if they are the data source for G?

It seems to be popular, their server has been overloaded with data for the last week, and just can't take anymore!

[RonPK]

@ mcskoufis: maybe you should submit at stopbadware.org

<thread clean-up>

[edited by: tedster at 4:29 pm (utc) on Aug. 7, 2006]

[MrSpeed]

I don't think Google should do this. Leave this up to Norton, Mcaffee and Windows Defender.

What will they warn us about next? Pop-ups? Affiliate links?

"Warning: The page you were attempting to reach contains affiliate links. Please choose one of our Adword approves sites instead"

[trinorthlighting]

Honestly, I think google should team up with one of the big antivirus and antispyware manufacturers and clean out the index. It would be a great customer service to its customers.

Think about it, if google served up a bunch of results that ended up crashing peoples computers, then customers would get upset at google and might start using another search service.

My thought, google should ban sites like these completely....

[TomJ]

how long before google or stopbadware wrongly stop traffic to a legit site either by mistake, malicious reporting etc etc?

[Dynamoo]

how long before google or stopbadware wrongly stop traffic to a legit site either by mistake, malicious reporting etc etc?

Looks at watch.. about 5 minutes I guess. I can see those people who control zombie botnets getting ready to supply hundreds of plausible looking reports about their competitors right now.

SiteAdvisor does it better, because you can still visit the site if you want. This thing seems to be blocking the site completely.

Although I must confess, I haven't seen this blocking behaviour yet. I guess it's only on some datacenters (unless it's actually vaporware).

[phantombookman]

If G feel confident to label someone's site as problematic wth malware etc why is it in their index?

If they cannot guarantee 100% accuracy then they should not potentially defame an innocent site

[rj87uk]

Its a good idea, thats all i can say!

[whoisgregg]

This thing seems to be blocking the site completely

Not what it looks like to me...
[news.com.com...] (or just the image link [i.n.com.com])

[mack]

In Firefox 2 (Beta) you can choose to use Google as your Phishing database. I assume that Google will also allow the mentioned extension to make use of this data for sites hosting malicious code.

Mack.

[stef25]

BBC news reports that as well as “free screensaver” and “free ringtones”, “download yahoo messenger” is among dangerous keywords. A bit harsh no?

[Powdork]

Is this just for free serps, or will they also filter adwords results? What about when a user clicks on an adsense ad that leads to malware?

[rytis]

Cool, but how about Adsense ads, leading to malware sites?

edit: lol powdork, my bad slow typing

[jomaxx]

LONG overdue. I don't see any reason in the world why Google wouldn't want to warn its users about dangerous sites. I linked to a site just the other day because the content was of genuine value, and had to add the warning "do not install anything this site asks you to". It's just common sense to do this.

I hope they do more than just flag specific download sites. They really need to hit those sites that push dangerous spyware ads on people. Think free web hosts, especially the overseas ones.

[trinorthlighting]

They need to ban those sites from their index..

What would really be great is if yahoo, msn, and google shared information about these types of sites and all three players make a better world for searchers..

[futuresky]

If they're going to do this they should put a very noticeable and easily accessed way for wrongly-defamed sites to be reviewed, particularly if the report mentioned in stef25's post is accurate. I can see lots of innocent sites being hurt by this. Still, that's what google seems to be doing more and more of these days sadly.

[commanderW]

This is a foolish move for google. Someone is going to sue for alot of money. Just for starters, malware, ala 180solutions & their current mutations, & even the Sony rootkit,have a user agreement for the installation of said malware secreted in their EULA. While skirting the law in the sleaziest & most reprehensible way, it is apparently legal ( in U.S. anyway.). So, while a site tracking & publicizing such scum is a good thing, an official google popup warning that 'visiting this site may harm your computer' is probably inaccurate, sounds more like a 'scare tactic' than sober information, & is potentially slanderous.
Then there's worse. who are these people? What's to stop them from being wrong? Are the sites who get tattooed going to receive an 'official' notice from these unappointed guardians? A search engine should search. I want to know what's on the web. Period. When google starts adopting prophylactic measures to protect people from fuzzy threats, they are joining the army of marching morons who can't mind their own business & claim to 'protect the innocents'. This group calls themselves a 'neighborhood watch group for the internet'. That's always spelled 'nutcase', 'meddler', & 'vigilante' in my book. Their standards can change w/ the wind & become as political & intolerant & censorious as they desire. They will wind up harming legitimate websites & the innocent they claim to protect. Google has no business throwing in w/ them. It's blackballing. Think of it as 'the scarlet letter of the internet'!

[mcavic]

They need to ban those sites from their index

I support either flagging the sites or banning them. I don't know which one is better. Flagging them is potentially slanderous, but banning them is perfectly within the SE's legal rights.

The Internet is being destroyed by spam, malware, and phishing, and it's way past time for some decent solutions.

[trinorthlighting]

If I were google, I would write some guidelines and ban. If a webmaster then fixes the site, they could get a reinclusion request.

I think google should also look at sites with pop up advertisements as well. Nothing is more annoying to a searcher who clicks on a result and has 20 popup advertisements crash their computer or slow down their 56k dial up modem.

[Essex_boy]

Nice idea but they are going to have to be careful what they say. Id be very unhappy if they put it on one of my sites in error.

[mcskoufis]

Guys I think if Google has to additionally perform anti-spy/casino/dialler/etc. operations on its index, their network simply won't cope with the load.

I am sure they are stuffed with spam reports and re-inclusion requests, it is hard to imagine adding such a workload, even if done through mcafee or whoever else.

If you look at it from a technical perspective, this adds up a lot of processing overload than what might be available to them. Google servers I think are LDAP directories connected together, so any such operation (from my experience with OpenLDAP) would be very costly indeed, even for google.

[4string]

Google should definitely attempt to contact the website owner to warn them their site has been tagged as suspicious. Otherwise you may not know what happened to your traffic if you are a clean site.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

When google starts adopting prophylactic measures to protect people from fuzzy threats, they are joining the army of marching morons who can't mind their own business & claim to 'protect the innocents'. This group calls themselves a 'neighborhood watch group for the internet'. That's always spelled 'nutcase', 'meddler', & 'vigilante' in my book.

With the state the Internet is in it's hard to understand why anyone would condemn any such initiative. This is tantamount to saying that antivirus and malware protection are an intrusion on the perpetrators civil liberties.

I would assume that you don't use anti spyware, malware or antivirus software? Isn't that censorious in exactly the same way? Are the companies who produce these to be trusted any more than Stopbadware?

an official google popup warning that 'visiting this site may harm your computer' is probably inaccurate

How on earth did you come to that conclusion?

[olias]

BBC news reports that as well as “free screensaver” and “free ringtones”, “download yahoo messenger” is among dangerous keywords. A bit harsh no?

Yeah that one scared me initially - I thought they were suggesting Google would be filtering by keywords.

Then I remembered seeing that keyword boxout previously, it had been used in a story for what keywords are most likely to land you on dangerous sites and they just dropped it in again here.

[jomaxx]

The reports seem to say that it's already being done but I can't find any examples, even if I specifically search for the homepages of software packages flagged by that "Stop Badware Coalition". Can anyone point me to a search or a site where this happens?

(BTW "badware" - yuck)

[commanderW]

Hi BeeDeeDubbleU -
1 - I was not saying that the proposed warning is censorious, but that once groups like this get the ball rolling, " Their standards can change like the wind... ", & then turn to more political concerns, & thus censorship. I guarantee you that once this is put in place someone is going to try to demand the same for websites w/ ' offensive' content, etc. etc ad infinitum. I only want to point out the rocky road that this kind of thing always leads to, & put forward the thought that a search engine already as vast & powerful as google shouldn't let itself be coaxed into implementing unrelated policies that are better left to other entities. I'm no expert on any of this. I only know from living a long time that this is not the promising & innocent proposal it seems to be. if search engines take it upon themselves to warn of, & perhapseventually ban websites based on the content that the user sees & has access to, then everyone is going to jump on the bandwagon & we'll all be buried w/all kinds of these warnings.
2 - The text of the proposed warning just does not read well. to my limited knowledge, simply visiting a site does not install or cause anything to be downloaded onto a computer. I have clicked on innocent looking links on sites wich did initiate a download of some very mysterious .exe files & other things. I suppose the same could be perpetrated w/ a link to a website. But this warning just sounds alittle too simplistic even for me, & i'm no programmer (yet.). That's all.
PS - i use a mac ( i had virex on it for awhile. ). I have had .exe files suddenly appearing on my desktop when clicking on .jpg links etc. every once in awhile. Previously, i didn't even know what the extension meant & trashed it like the occasional .php or .html file i occasionally get instead of the picture file or .dmg or whatever else i think i'm supposed to get. There is at least one website that i can probably go back to & get the same file i got when i foolishly clicked on a yes button on a pop up that said "support this website". the file had a short bit of code ( i can't recall the file type but it was probably .exe. ) which i cannot yet understand. If anyone wants to take a look i can post it here. I'd be interested if it's malicious because the website is a labour of love by the fan of a famous singer & i just doubt she would put it there herself. This leads back to the other point i wanted to make. People other than the webmaster can insert code onto websites, so if google or anybody simply brands them as 'bad' they are doing a disservice. I think a group who checks it out, advises the webmaster just like an antivirus software advises the user, is a prior requirement. I saw nothing on the 'badware' site on this.
.- So call me "chicken little" or "pollyana".i just don't like to see words like 'ban' being thrown around too casually, that's all. - thanx everyone

[commanderW]

Sorry everyone, but rethinking my reply to the 2nd objection by BeeBeeDubbleU - Actually, all kinds of things do get 'downloaded' when you visit websites, like cookies. This raises another question. Alot of people consider certain kinds of cookies to be spyware. Who at Stopbadware or anyware else is going to be the arbiter in these cases?