Security Watch | Matt Hines » Hosting companies respond to criticism

May 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Hosting companies respond to criticism

TAGS: Security

According to researchers at the StopBadware.org project, three of the five Web site hosting companies cited as the most popular homes for malware-infected URLs in the group's recent study on the topic have made contact with the initiative in hopes of improving their situations.

In response to the original study -- which identified the top five service providers responsible for hosting the world's most prolific malware-brokering Web sites according to StopBadware's estimates -- the leading outlet for malware sites, iPowerWeb, has already implemented new processes and shut down a number of suspicious sites on its servers and fixed others that were infected.

Researchers reported that two other companies named in its report -- Internap Network Services and Layered Technologies -- have been in touch with the group in hopes of working together to improve their predicaments.

StopBadware's rankings were based on its tally of hosts of sites reported to its malware clearinghouse by third parties entities, including other research efforts and individual end users.

"We're happy to report that we are now in contact with iPowerWeb, and that it has demonstrated a commitment to working proactively to combat badware," said researchers with the project on its blog site. StopBadware.org is a security project spearheaded by researchers at Harvard and Oxford Universities and backed by companies including Google, Lenovo and Sun.

"iPowerWeb has informed us that it has located and removed badware-distributing code from thousands of its sites that are listed in our Clearinghouse," the group said. "These sites will now be reviewed according to our usual process. All sites that are confirmed to be clean will then be removed from the Badware Web site Clearinghouse."

While the blog offered few details of what Network Services and Layered Technologies are planning to do to rid their own operations of malware sites, StopBadware organizers said they are "looking forward to working with these and other hosting providers to help combat badware at the hosting level."

Of the over 49,000 malware sites investigated by the project in its study, nearly 18,000 were represented by the top five hosting providers.

iPowerWeb had almost 11,000 of the malware infected sites tracked residing on its Web servers, while Layered Technologies (roughly 2,500 sites) followed, ahead of ThePlanet.com Internet Services (2,000) and Internap Network Services (1,400), all of which are based in the United States.

Coming in a far-off fifth was Chinanet Guangdong province network (800), the only international entry on the list.

Now who says that calling companies out publicly for their sins can't be a useful form of protest?

Posted by Matt Hines on May 22, 2007 12:35 PM

RATE THIS ARTICLE: