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A CRAWLER BASED STUDY OF SPYWARE ON THE WEB. Vijay Savanth The University of Auckland Computer Science Department vijaysavanth@gmail.com.
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A CRAWLER BASED STUDY OF SPYWARE ON THE WEB Vijay Savanth TheUniversity of Auckland Computer Science Department vijaysavanth@gmail.com A. Moshchuk, T. Bragin, S. D. Gribble, H. M. Levy, “A Crawler-based Study of Spyware on the Web”, in Proceedings of the 13th Annual Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium (NDSS 2006), The Internet Society, 2006.
SUMMARY • The paper aims at analyzing the effect spyware has on the internet, by conducting a study to address the following issues, • Determining the amount of spyware on the internet • Its distribution over a variety of sites, (game sites, adult sites, music sites, etc.) • The damage spyware can do • The types of spyware attacks, i.e. via executables or drive-by downloads • The rate of change of spyware over time
APPRECIATION • Commendable effort spent in creating a high performance, automated system that: • Crawls the web, and downloads executables • Automatically installs executables within a Virtual Machine that contained Windows XP • Analyzes if the installation caused spyware infection • Uses trigger conditions to detect drive by downloads • Rolls back to a clean state
CRITICISIM • Test environment contradicts aim – “In this paper we change perspective, examining the nature of the spyware threat not on the desktop but from an internet point of view” • Windows XP was the only Operating System considered. • Internet Explorer was the main browser used, (Firefox gets a brief mention). • What about websites/programs in a language other than English? • Tends to be desktop oriented rather than internet oriented.
CRITICISIM (contd.) • What is the author trying to convey? • Is spyware increasing or decreasing? • How is the distribution or rate of change of spyware affecting the internet? • Raw results provided without much analysis.
QUESTION ??? • Spyware is quite common on the internet, but will the extent or distribution of spyware affect user browsing behavior in a given environment?