Why Porn gets a bad name in Security, and how it’s just like most SMBs….

Before I start, let me just say that this is not a post to condemn or condone Porn on the net; this is a post to answer some questions that come up regularly from users. Also, it is a discussion between myself and some of my IT colleagues comparing porn sites to SMBs. Almost every time I get a request to take care of malware or virus infections on a machine, I get the inevitable comments about the user not going to porn sites, never looking at those kind of things, etc. And of course, that usually means they think that you only get infections from porn sites. I will then explain some of the different ways you can get an infection. The conversation usually goes to “Well, why is it that they always talk about getting infections from porn sites?” That’s because they get the most press good or bad, and just about everyone knows that porn is available on the Internet. I thought I would post my two cents to try and clear some of the misconceptions. Since many porn sites are basically Small/Medium Businesses, a lot of what applies to them in this article applies to the clients I have had in the non-Adult Entertainment world.

The following is my view of things, your mileage may vary……

Many of the malware and viruses out there are looking to spread in the best and most wide spread way possible. Since sex, porn, naked pictures of ‘Insert Celebrity name here’ are some of THE most widely searched terms on the net, this is one of the oldest and most popular ways to spread your infection around to unknowing users. Before pop-up ads, banners, phishing, click jacking and the like became the big way to spread malware around, a lot of people would get online and search for pornography, esp the young teenage crowd. And since you could setup a website with almost anything on it, what better way to get yourself a large amount of victims? And, of course once you infect a machine, setting up a few pop-ups on the machine that talk about ‘Hot Girls’ and the like will allow more infections to get in (like any distraction, it’s not what you’re looking at that is the issue, it’s what you don’t see in the background that is the problem) and while it may eventually make the user seek help in getting the machine fixed, the embarrassment and humiliation of having to show those pop-ups to a stranger (or worse, someone you know) can delay the fixing of the PC long enough to enable personal information gathering, use of the machine for storage of pirated files, or use of the resources of the machine to attack other machines to happen. Why use porn? Well because you’ll get more hits from “LIVE! NAKED! GIRLS!” “Click here to see Insert Celebrity name here” “HOT SINGLE MEN/WOMEN/GOATS WAITING JUST FOR YOU!!!!” than you will if you say “LIVE! NAKED! SPYWARE!” “Click here to see how fast your machine can get a computer virus!” “HOT IDENTITY THEFT WAITING JUST FOR YOU!!!!”. Now which is more likely to generate traffic and get viruses etc. spread out farther?

With the ease of the setting up a website on the internet, many people now have a site, from small businesses to people who believe they are the greatest thing to hit the adult entertainment industry since high speed internet connections enabled the downloading of videos. The problem is that many of the adult sites that get setup have a lot in common (when it comes to a lack of security) with small businesses, they just get more press. If a small business gets compromised, you really don’t hear about it. But if an Adult entertainment site (which sells videos, pictures what have you) gets compromised and starts handing out viruses and malware, or worse their customer information, it becomes news on the Internet. The trouble is no matter what the small business site or Adult site are selling, they suffer from the same thing… not enough informative decision making when creating their site. A lot of sites out there are using Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Linux servers but have no idea that after they set them up, they need to lock them down. Sure you can get a site setup and running with an out of the box setup, but you leave yourself wide open to compromise by hacker wannabes, up and comings and veteran hackers alike. And even if you do lock down the server and the software (PHP and Apache seem to be favorite targets as they are so popular) when you update the server, you have to go back over it and make sure it is locked down again. If you’re a web master and have the time to stay on top of the server, this shouldn’t be too bad. But if you’re a small business owner/porn site owner, you most likely are doing the work yourself in between trying to create new content, shoot pictures, create products, manage the business etc. This means that you do not have the time or the knowledge to secure the system and keep on top of the patches etc. Many places have cousin Ralphie’s college bound son/friend of a friend, or a third party company who does the site management for them and again, they may know how to make a web page but not how to secure it properly. Many of of them do not want to spend the money to hire a professional to help them either setup or secure the site because it could cut too deeply into their profit margins. While that may be true, it also may not be true. And it’s better to get help sooner rather than later. I’ve dealt with small businesses (non porn) that have been hacked, and waited until after the fact to ask for help, and generally the damage to the business and cost of recovery outweighs what the initial cost of getting the site secured to begin with would have been. There are always IT professionals who are willing to be reasonable on price and advice that small business owners can turn to. Not asking around, either before or after the fact is foolish in my personal opinion, but it does happen. As I have told many of my SMB clients, do some research on the web, make a few phone calls, find out what some of your peers are doing and see if they have any helpful suggestions about securing your online presence.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Technomagic authored by David. Read the original post at: https://varne.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/why-porn-gets-a-bad-name-in-security-and-how-its-just-like-most-smbs/