June 2009 Archives

A McAfee study into 2,600 of the most popular keyword searches on the web has concluded that hunts for "screensavers" present the most risk.

The report released this week shows that users who search for "screensavers" have a 59.1 percent chance that they will be infected by malware on a given page of results.

By category, the most dangerous searches involved keywords containing the word "lyrics" (26.3 percent risk) and "free" (21.3 percent). The safest category searches, meanwhile, related to "health" (four percent) and the "economic crisis" (3.5 percent).

The report also warned of the risk generated by searching for information on "work from home." Variations of this search term -- considered more popular than ever, given the state of the economy -- ranged from a 6.3 percent-risk to a 40 percent-risk of infection.

Popular search terms are used by hackers to attract visitors to web sites that automatically download malware to unsuspecting users. The malware can then be used to build a botnet for the hacker or to gather personal information about the user and steal their identity.

Download the full report here.