McAfee Reports Adware and Spyware Growth
SINGAPORE -- 12 September 2006 -- McAfee, Inc. today reported that
the prevalence of adware and spyware is increasing at an
exponential rate and the most prolific distributors of adware are
star/celebrity Web sites. In a white paper entitled Adware and
Spyware: Unraveling the Financial Web, McAfee Avert Labs
highlights the financial incentives fueling the rise of adware and
spyware, and culprits behind the problem. The paper is available
at: http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/default.asp.
McAfee research shows that adware and spyware distributors abuse
the affiliate marketing programs of legitimate companies. In
addition, adware distributors use front companies and web sites to
reach unsuspecting users and intermediaries, meaning that
legitimate sites are finding themselves tied to known spyware
distributors. Programs then install themselves on a users machine,
often as the trade-off for a piece of free software, and are used
to collect marketing data and distribute targeted
advertising.
Key research findings include:
* Celebrities are a bigger lure than sex. The most prolific
distributors of adware are star/celebrity Web sites not the
commonly believed adult and pornography web sites, according to
McAfee SiteAdvisor.
* The prevalence of adware and spyware is increasing at an
exponential rate. By August 2006, there were approximately 450
adware families with more than 4,000 variants.
* A recent survey by McAfee SiteAdvisor found that 97 percent of
Internet users could not differentiate safe from unsafe sites,
meaning that the majority of users are just one click away from
downloading potentially unwanted programs.
* The adware business model is lucrative. A recent criminal
indictment alleged that Jeanson James Ancheta, a convicted
bot-herder, received US$150 per each 1,000 infected
computers.
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,
said Jeff Green, senior vice president of product development,
McAfee, Inc. 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 more than 1,000 percent,
demonstrating a sharp increase.
The paper also highlights the confusion merchants and consumers
face surrounding spyware and adware, and the blurred boundaries
between malicious, unwanted programs and friendly software.
To learn more about adware, spyware, and the top potentially
unwanted programs rated by McAfee, visit the McAfee Threat Center:
http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/default.asp.
