Google broadens its malware sleuthing to sniff out deceptive downloads

Google broadens its malware sleuthing to sniff out deceptive downloads

By Zach Miners @zachminers Aug 14, 2014 12:00

Google is expanding its safe browsing technology to notify Web users of downloads that appear benign, but actually make unwanted changes to their computers.

Starting next week, the company’s safe browsing service will identify more types of deceptive software on the Web, Google said Thursday. The company is homing in on programs that claim to be helpful downloads, but end up making unexpected changes to a computer like switching the homepage or other browser settings, Google said.

Sometimes referred to as a PUP, or potentially unwanted program, this type of software can come bundled with free applications. But it may end up doing more than is advertised, sometimes running processes in the background or creating pop-up ads.

Google said it would show a warning in Chrome whenever an attempt is made to trick a user into downloading and installing such software, and block it. If they want, people can still access the software from their downloads list.

Google created its safe browsing service in 2006 as a way to identify unsafe websites, malware and phishing attempts, and warn users and webmasters about them. Google checks URLs against a constantly updated list of suspected phishing and malware pages, testing the questionable sites using a virtual machine to see if the machine gets infected.

With the technology, more than 3 million warnings are shown per week, Google says. The company claims to have had “very few” false positives.

In addition to Google’s Chrome, the service is also used by Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari. Google did not immediately respond to clarify when those browsers would begin to recognize the enhancements.


http://www.pcworld.com/article/2465520/google-broadens-its-malware-sleuthing-to-sniff-out-deceptive-downloads.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Report: World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China

World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China Published time: 17 Mar, 2019 13:12 ·           A Chinese surgeon has performed the world’s first remote brain surgery using 5G technology, with the patient 3,000km away from the operating doctor. Dr. Ling Zhipei remotely implanted a neurostimulator into his patient’s brain on Saturday, Chinese state-run media  reports . The surgeon manipulated the instruments in the Beijing-based PLAGH hospital from a clinic subsidiary on the southern Hainan island, located 3,000km away. The surgery is said to have lasted three hours and ended successfully. The patient, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, is said to be feeling well after the pioneering operation. The doctor used a computer connected to the next-generation 5G network developed by Chinese tech giant Huawei. The new device enabled a near real-time connection, according to Dr. Ling.  “You barely feel that the patient is 3,000 kilometers away,”  he said.
Read more

Visualizing The Power Of The World's Supercomputers

Visualizing The Power Of The World's Supercomputers   BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, JAN 21, 2022 - 04:15 AM   A supercomputer is a machine that is built to handle billions, if not trillions of calculations at once. Each supercomputer is actually made up of many individual computers (known as nodes) that work together in parallel. A common metric for measuring the performance of these machines is  flops , or  floating point operations per second . In this visualization,  Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu uses  November 2021 data from  TOP500  to visualize the computing power of the world’s top five supercomputers. For added context, a number of modern consumer devices were included in the comparison. Ranking by Teraflops Because supercomputers can achieve over one quadrillion flops, and consumer devices are much less powerful, we’ve used  teraflops  as our comparison metric. 1 teraflop = 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) flops. Supercomputer Fugaku  was completed in March 202
Read more

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car Stealer's Wheel? Seattle police department quotes "Watchmen" movie in a recap of the recent arrest. Tech Culture by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper December 4, 2016 5:00 PM PST It's maybe the most satisfying arrest we can imagine. Seattle police caught an alleged car thief by enlisting the help of car maker BMW to both track and then remotely lock the luckless criminal in the very car he was trying to steal. Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, deputy director of communications for the Seattle Police Department, posted a witty summary of the event on the SPD's blog on Wednesday. Turns out if you're inside a stolen car, it's perhaps not the best time to take a nap. "A car thief awoke from a sound slumber Sunday morning (Nov. 27) to find he had been remotely locked inside a stolen BMW, just as Seattle police officers were bearing down on him," Spangenthal-Lee wrote. The suspect found a ke
Read more