A paper from McAfee Avert Labs entitled, “Adware and Spyware: Unraveling the Financial Web,” have been released by McAfee. The paper, which is availed at http://www.mcafee.com, brings to light the financials incentives stimulating the boost of adware and spyware, the pervasiveness of adware and spyware and perpetrators behind the nuisance. McAfee research claims that adware and spyware purveyors misuse the affiliate marketing programs of legal companies.
Patrick Hayati, Regional Managing Director Middle East, McAfee, Inc,
The emergence of lucrative online affiliate-marketing business models and the widespread ease with which adware and spyware can be spread have made them prominent features in the threat landscape.” “Since 2003, when adware and spyware emerged as dominant threats in the security environment, to 2006, we have seen the number of adware families rise by 448%, demonstrating a sharp increase over the last several years.
Besides, adware vendors make use of front firms and Web sites to gain access unsuspicious users and intermediaries, importing that legal sites are discovering themselves coupled to identify spyware vendors. Programs then deploy themselves on a user’s PC, frequently as the trade-off for a piece of “free” software, and are utilized to bring together marketing data and give out beleaguered advertising. Given below are the key research findings from the paper:
(1) A current study by McAfee SiteAdvisor discovered that 9 per cent of Internet users could not distinguish safe from unsafe sites, importing that loads of users are only one click away from downloading potentially unwanted programs.
(2) The pervasiveness of adware and spyware is escalating at an exponential rate. By May 2006, there were over 700 adware families with over 6,000 variants.
(3) According to McAfee SiteAdvisor, “Celebrities are a big attraction. The most prolific distributors of adware are star/celebrity Web sites.
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