malware

44 Articles

Predictive Blacklisting With DShield

July 25, 2008 by 4 Comments


The DShield project is hoping to change how we protect our networks from malware with predictive blacklisting. Using a method similar to Google’s PageRank, DShield collects logs from network administrators to help develop a score based on maliciousness. They combine this score with information about where the malware has already hit to determine an overall threat level.

Similar to antivirus programs, the system still relies on networks being attacked to rate the threat level. They have shown though, that the predictive method is consistently more effective than manual blacklisting. The system has been available for free for the past year. Those utilizing the system have been reporting positive results. They do note that there are a few people whose network infrastructure doesn’t match up with the predictions very well. If you would like to participate, go to their site and sign up.

U.S. And China Host Majority Of Malware

June 25, 2008 by 10 Comments


StopBadware.org has released their May 2008 Infected Sites Report(PDF). They took their current list of 213K active badware websites and resolved the IP addresses. These addresses were used to determine the network block owner and country. The results could be skewed to networks Google scans more often, but they should give a decent overall picture. China hosts 52% of all the badware sites while the U.S. has 21%. There weren’t any other countries maintaining over 4% of the total. They also calculated the number of infected sites per capita, which China also led. Last year’s report resulted in several AS block maintainers cleaning up to the point that they don’t even make the top 250 this year.