Google, the search engine giant, has conducted an internal survey. The result is the discovery that one in every ten websites that were scanned were infected with malicious software - or malware - that could hard your PC.
Google surveyed billions of websites, and conducted in-depth studies of around 4.5 million web sites.
Around 450,00 websites were found capable to conduct "drive by" downloads to your computer, and using this, attacks can download malicious codes on your PC - a further 700,000 websites are capable of compromising your PC.
In the report entitled The Ghost in The Browser, Niels Provos, Google Researcher, wrote "To entice users to install malware, adversaries employ social engineering. The user is presented with links that promise access to ‘interesting' pages with explicit pornographic content, copyrighted software or media. Common examples are sites that display thumbnails to adult videos."
Provos also said that Google is making an effort to identify all pages that infect PC's, and has already started a program to warn users before they visit a site that may hurt their PC.
Google also has a label next to any known site that can infect your computer when searching in their engine. It's not much, but it is helpful. |
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