Tech Center Current

Google recently conducted a large-scale study which showed that about 1 in 10 websites attempted to install malicious software like viruses, spyware, adware, or other malware without the user’s knowledge or consent. About 1 in 4 websites had links or other content leading to malicious software.

While it has always been known that many websites contain malicious content, this study makes it clear just how severe the problem is. Most of these websites make use of known security vulnerabilities in your web browser. If you don’t regularly keep your system up-to-date with your operating system’s update mechanism (if you don’t know what this is, then your system probably isn’t up-to-date), or if there are known vulnerabilities in your browser which the browser vendor hasn’t yet supplied updates for, any of these websites could silently install software which tracks your habits, steals your passwords, or bogs down your system while it uses your computer to send people spam.

What can be done about it? Well, Google has begun alerting users before they follow a search result which Google knows contains malicious content. Google has also developed a fraud detection tool as a new feature of the Firefox web browser. New versions of Internet Explorer and Opera also have similar fraud detection tools.

However, these features can only offer a limited amount of protection. Using a more secure web browser is an important step to keeping yourself safer. Internet Explorer, which is the default web browser on most computers, has the worst security track record by a large margin. Firefox and Opera, which are available free-for-life on all major operating systems, have almost no history of exploited “drive-by-malware” vulnerabilities. On average, they have also fixed their publicly known security issues several times faster than Internet Explorer. Take a look at some security charts and figures.

If you really want to keep yourself safe from malicious software, you could also consider switching to a different operating system. Mac OS X and Linux both have a file permissions model which prevents unauthorized software from harming your system. Furthermore, viruses and other malware designed to work on Windows generally won’t work on other operating systems because they are tailored specifically for Windows.

At the very least, always make sure that you enable and install your system updates, and always upgrade your web browser when a new version is released. A 2004 study showed that 80% of home computers were infected with some kind of malicious software even though 85% of home computers had antivirus software installed. This is a real risk to every computer user, and you should take the proper steps to mitigate it.