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Re: [News] [Rival] Hackers hijack web search results

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> ____/ Mark Kent on Tuesday 04 December 2007 16:44 : \____
> 
>> The Ghost In The Machine <ewill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>> This story from the things that make one go "eeee-yuck" department:
>>> 
>>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7118452.stm
>>> 
>>>     Hackers hijack web search results
>>> 
>>>     A huge campaign to poison web searches and trick people
>>>     into visiting malicious websites has been thwarted.
>>> 
>>> (hopefully!)
>>> 
>>>     The booby-trapped websites came up in search results
>>>     for search terms such as "Christmas gifts" and
>>>     "hospice".
>>> 
>>>     Windows users falling for the trick risked having their
>>>     machine hijacked and personal information plundered.
>>> 
>>>     The criminals poisoned search results using thousands
>>>     of domains set up to convince search index software
>>>     they were serious sources of information.
>>> 
>>>     [...]
>>> 
>>>     [Raimund Genes, chief technology officer at Trend
>>>     Micro] said the booby-trapped websites discovered
>>>     by Trend Micro tried to exploit several different
>>>     vulnerabilities in Microsoft's web browser. The sites
>>>     also attempted to stop the malicious software being
>>>     spotted by intermittently scrambling the package before
>>>     it downloads.
>>> 
>>> [end excerpt]
>>> 
>>> --
>>> #191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> Linux.  An OS which actually, unlike certain other offerings, works.
>>> 
>> 
>> The risks you run by running Windows on machines which are connected to
>> the internet are grave indeed.
> 
> The symptoms described above are familiar. In the search engines newsgroups,
> every now and then you have people starting a thread about how Google
> is 'broken'. It later turns out that they just need to scan and cleanse their
> broken [w|W]indows. Do you know how time consuming these things can be? They
> are also common. The time wasted costs:
> 
> 1. The search engines, which need to cope with lost customers
> 2. The advertisers, whose placements are hijacked and misused
> 2. The end user, which needs to call in an 'expert' to clean the [w|W]indows.
> 
> If only you could measure the amount of money (and pain) spent due to Windows
> problems...
> 

I think it could be possible to make such an estimate, but the numbers
would be so large, that I doubt ordinary people would believe them.  The
cost of road traffic congestion is often estimated for London, for
example, but I suspect that the cost of Windows is several orders of
magnitude greater.

-- 
| Mark Kent   --   mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk          |
| Cola faq:  http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/   |
| Cola trolls:  http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/                        |
| My (new) blog:  http://www.thereisnomagic.org                        |

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