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 |
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