Google the absolute king of malware search results!

General Topics
1

Hi malware fighters,

Still searching with Google? “Google is king, where malware distribution is concerned, my friends, it serves up twice as much malware as Bing, Twitter & Yahoo added together when searching popular topics.” Google is responsible for 69% of all malicious search results, Yahoo! follows with (18%), Bing has (12%) and Twitter has a mere (1%), this all according this report: http://www.barracudalabs.com/downloads/BarracudaLabs2010MidyearSecurityReport.pdf

So search using http://www.ixquick.com/ (also better privacy wise - short retention policy)

polonus -

2

sorry to not agree with that, the engine you’re advising may be fine, but Google still rules. Been using it continuously for years now, no infection so far. Depends where you surf I suppose. If you “want” to reach malware…then Google will take you to it. Google search engine keeps ruling on the Internet like Windows does on the desktop: whether one likes it or not is another story, but that’s a reality, and that’s normal. It’s impossible to argue against that…I’m not praising any sort of online ideology, just pointing out that technically, Google search engine outperforms all the rest. So I’ll stick to it :wink:

3

Well if google serves up only twice as much as Yahoo, Bing and Twitter, to my mind that means Yahoo, Bing and Twitter are worse, based on their combined volume of searches.

So it is the old case of lies, damn lies and statistics.

It is the total hits returned (far higher than the competition, which may have an impact on malware results) and accuracy of searches that attract me and people and hopefully they are clever enough to recognise the malware returns.

4

Wow, I actually agree with Logos on something LOL. I tried Ixquick and even added it to my list of search providers in IE8 but I don’t really like it. It’s slower for one thing and it lacks the suggestions while typing out your search text that I really find useful when using Google. With Google I often only have to type a few letters and it suggests exactly what I’m looking for. That’s very convenient and time saving. I have poor typing skills and can only type with two fingers while looking at the keyboard the whole time to find the letters and still often hitting a wrong key. I actually can type over 40WPM in this fashion but the only keys I can find without looking are the space bar and backspace keys and most of the time the A key. I’ll stick with Google too.

5

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4
June 2010 (screen shot attached)

ps: yeah, there’s one percent missing, affected to Google on the main graph, have no idea where they’re from.

6

Thanks for that link Logos, proves what I was talking about that by volume the quantity of malicious search hits are less with google than all the rest combined.

Selective Statistics can be manipulated to support whatever position it is that you want to promote/say in this case FUD that google has a higher quantity of malicious search hits.

7

yeah, when referring to the link given by Polonus, Yahoo+Bing would combine 30% of malware search, when according to the other graph, they combine about 10% market share, as opposed to more than 80% for Google. This tells indeed a lot ;D Would Google be safer ??? …hmm…sounds like yes ;D

edit: imagine the horror show if Bing or Yahoo dominated that market :smiley:

8

Statistics:
Give me any 2 numbers and when you combine them you’ll have 3.
Add to the mix someone who really doesn’t care for Google or it’s policies, and it might add up to 4. ;D ;D

9

.

I assume somebody at Barracuda Networks, Inc. will fix the error, but when I see a person with 3 degrees, one being a Ph.D, make a basic grammar mistake in the first page of text in a report that contains so few pages of text, I immediately have doubts whether I want to trust the data. There really is no excuse for such carelessness.

In addition, some of those charts are confusing, but I already have doubts about that report, so I am thinking, “To heck with them.”

Still, somebody’s point in this thread about manipulating data is smack on target. Just ask some executive at Goldman Sachs how that’s done.

.

10

@ ManyQs: yep I also had doubts about the data, the methodology as explained in the document isn’t very clear, i.e. we don’t know precisely what represent the percentages, like 1% is 1% of what exactly…

Methodology: We created a system that gets the set of popular search terms hourly and searches for those terms. It then pulls the set of search results and retrieves the web sites of the results. The system then analyzes the sites for malicious code
.
11

When you’re the top dog, you’re also the biggest target. Some people always look for reasons to tear down whoever is on top and the majority of the criticisms are determined to be unfounded. You’re trying to build market share for your search engine, attack the leader and give reasons why people shouldn’t use it any more. The ends justify the means so it doesn’t matter if the data presented is true or not. Microsoft has suffered from this for years. Walmart has as well. I worked for them for over 5 years and I can tell you that most of the lawsuits filed against them were frivolous.

12

Here’s a possible reason… ;D
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=62351.msg526713#msg526713
asyn

13

Once again, more was made of that than was warranted. Like everything else, it was quickly fixed and the exploits were few.

14

Google is still best. I often see their search bots scanning my visited pages, seconded in frequency by Yahoo bots. This would indicate that Google and Yahoo are more complete search engines.

15

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Dch48, your point about going after the top dog has validity, but I wonder if such a sinister reasoning could have caused a skewing of the data presented to the public in that report.

I haven’t looked at the pdf since I last went through it about ten hours ago, so I’m going on memory here.

The first thing that jumped out at me as I scrolled through the pages was there are 80 pages total with two being title pages, so that’s 78 left. About 4 or 5 contained text and all the rest are bar graphs, pie charts, etc. So let’s say we have 70 plus such pies, charts, etc. My experince in teaching business classes is that frequently such charts require explanation of one thing or another. I really can’t recall a presentation that didn’t need some sort of accompaning explanation, frequently an oral explanation. Hence those long presentations that executives give that put all but the most passionate to sleep before they head off dreary-eyed to lunch, not to speak of the awful post-lunch presentations.

That report is in the form of a written presentation and so few explanations! Yellow flag!!

So I go back to the beginning to give it a thorough look and BAM, right there is a basic grammar mistake and I think, “Wow, these people can’t even notice such a simple and easy to see mistake before they release the report. These people don’t pay attention to detail. If they can’t pay attention to detail in an area of grammar that is so basic, what details did they miss while gathering the statsitics?” Red flag!!!

Two strikes and I decided I didn’t really have the time to go for strike three and strike out the report, and walked off the field.

But I’ll bet that if I were to dig into that report for a few hours I’d find strike three.

Ah yes, betting is based on tables of probablity, which is mathematics. Other than mathematics, flying, writing code, compiling and evaluating statistics all require an attention to detail above that needed to walk and chew gum.

Nope, if you show me you can’t pay attention to detail on the first page of a report based upon compiling, evaluating, organizing, and disseminating statistics I tend to lose my own attentive ability.

So, Dch48, I am wondering if the skewed data is a result of some agenda, or is simply a result of carelessness.

.

16

We don’t know and probably never will. It’s more likely due to the process of having a preconceived notion and only presenting the evidence that supports your case and ignoring the rest. Politicians, Scientists, and Lawyers do that all the time and businessmen are no different.