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Oct 31 2008
Fighting Spam and Malware – The Battle that Never Ends
Did you know that 75% of websites that contain malware are in fact legitimate sites that have been compromised? According to a report (pdf) published this summer by Websense, even 60% of the 100 most popular websites have hosted or been somehow involved in malicious activities.
These are scary numbers and the idea of having a site/blog hacked is even scarier for less web savvy publishers. No one wants to have their sites caught in the web of a hacker. For those of you who think that no hacker will attack your site because “it’s not important enough” – we have some news: your site is probably not in the top 100 most popular, but it can be used as a pawn in a bigger scheme.
When a hacker uses your site for any type of attack he will most likely insert a hidden script into your website code. Sites and blogs hosted on free platforms like blogger.com and wordpress.com are more exposed, because the hackers generally aim at authority sites/hosts. Websites hosted on private servers are generally more secure.
Malware can virtually kill your site. If you are a Google toolbar user you’ve probably already noticed the warning pop-up displayed by the engine once you click on a result branded as malicious. Often this pop-up is associated with sites you knew to be safe. You can trust the warning: the sites you considered malware free are no longer safe to browse.
You want to avoid malicious scripts and hacking attacks on your site because you don’t want to lose the trust of your visitors and community.
If your site does get hacked, there are some ways out, depending on the CMS you use to publish your content. For WordPress powered sites and blogs I strongly recommend Michael Vandemar’s How To Completely Clean Your Hacked WordPress Installation
Google also has a Safe Browsing API, that allows developers and web hosting companies to download Google’s list of suspected phishing and malware URLs.
I totally agree that fighting spam and malware never ends. It is like who’s first, the egg or chicken or some thing like that.
Thanks for post.
charles | Nov 1, 2008 | Reply
Something to keep in mind is that much of the malware is automated, meaning it isn’t targeted at “important” sites. It seeks vulnerable sites and infects them. Because of this, there are no insignificant sites. They’re all vulnerable.
Chiron613 | Nov 25, 2008 | Reply