Google's Blogger top for web-hosted malware

• Tags:
• Malware,
• Blogger,
• Paul Ducklin,
• Detect

Robert Vamosi and Alex Serpo ZDNet Australia

Published: 25 Jul 2008 08:44 BST

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Google has catapulted itself to the top of the ranks of web hosts with the most malware, courtesy of its blogging website Blogger, according to security vendor Sophos.

"During June, two percent of all the web-hosted malware we found was on that site," Sophos security researcher Paul Ducklin said.

However, Ducklin defended the search giant, saying that the amount of malware present on Blogger was due to the popularity of the site. "If a particular internet service provider has the most customers, they would probably, de facto, have the most computers on their network which are zombies," he said.

"With Google there is so much space in there... but it is surprising — two percent is enormous," Ducklin said. Sophos said the most common form of malware was SQL injection attacks, with one new infected web page discovered every five seconds.

Ducklin said sites like Blogger and others were also a prime target. "The cybercriminals are actively targeting sites that not only permit but actively encourage people to upload external content, including links to stuff of interest."

A spokeperson for Google told ZDNet.co.uk sister site CNET News.com: "Google takes the security of our users very seriously and we work hard to protect them from malware. Using Blogger, or any Google product, to serve or host malware is a violation of our product policies. We actively work to detect and remove sites that serve malware from our network."

Credit: Google's Blogger number one for malware from ZDNet Australia

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