More industry attention on web-based malware

Yesterday, Google announced that it plans to start providing owners of malware-infected sites with samples of the bad code that its scanners have uncovered. This new functionality is launching as an experimental feature in Webmaster Tools, and as I mentioned in the talk I gave at Google this past July, we're excited to be working in concert with Google and others to tackle the threat of web-based malware and help make the web a safer place overall.

This announcement clearly underlines the growing need for this kind of information and for new tools to help site owners protect themselves and their users. As we've mentioned before in this space, millions of legitimate webpages are infected with web-based malware every month, and the size of the blacklists maintained by search engines, browsers, and AV providers continues to grow.

Another issue the announcement raises is how difficult it can be for businesses whose sites have been infected to locate the source of the infections and address them (especially since the malicious code is sometimes heavily obscured). And since businesses often don't discover these infections until their sites have been blacklisted, they're taking a hit in traffic, revenue, and reputation with every hour that passes as they try to solve the problem.

We've helped tens of thousands of site owners deal with web-based malware infections in the last eight months -- providing not just snippets, but also full, regular site scans, immediate infection alerts, and automatic remediation tools -- and we've seen firsthand how frustrating these infections can be for them, and how helpful services like Dasient WAM can be.

If you're concerned about web-based malware infections and the impact they can have on your business, sign up for Dasient's monitoring service, which can identify infections and alert you before your site ends up on one of the blacklists. We also encourage you to try out our free, open-source server plugin, which will automatically block any malicious code we detect from being served to users -- helping you keep those users safe and keep your site off the blacklists.