Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Your search = malware drive by?

cnet posted an interesting summary from McAfee's SiteAdvisor:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10317029-83.html

Through no fault of her own, actress Jessica Biel is now the most hazardous celebrity on the Internet.

Fans searching online for Biel have a one-in-five chance of hitting a Web site with malware, according to McAfee's third annual report listing Hollywood's most "dangerous" online celebrities.

In general, hunting for Hollywood's in-crowd poses a much greater threat than searching for just about anyone else. For example, President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama ranked No. 34 and No. 39, respectively.


Add to this the fact that searching for things like "free wallpaper" or "free screen savers" can also land you on a compromised site that can infect the majority of machines . . . it's a parasite laden jungle out there.

But by far the worst infections these days still seem to propagate via email. Spammers send links or attachments -- and users still open them!

You -- you know who you are: stop that!