Citizen Malware?

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the whoops dept

Apparently OhMyNews, the Korean site that was the first major proponent of the citizen journalism concept, got hit with a bit of malware over the weekend that could have been installed on the computers of visitors to the site. It’s a reminder that things like trojans and keyloggers are increasingly sneaking their way onto computers through completely legitimate sites that have been compromised. I recently got hit with one such trojan, despite using 3 different anti-spyware apps and an anti-virus app — not to mention not downloading random crap and generally trying to stay on known websites. It took quite a bit of effort (and some help from some smart spyware fighters) to get rid of it, as it buried itself pretty deeply. In fact, in the end, I had six different anti-spyware products running on my machine — and only two found the trojan, and neither could remove it.