5 Million Domains Serving Malware Via Network Solutions

An anonymous reader writes "A compromised widget provided by Network Solutions was serving malware on otherwise legitimate websites. But, as bad as this discovery was, it was overshadowed a couple of days later by another revelation: the widget is automatically included on every 'parked domain' by Network Solutions! Searches on Google and Yahoo! revealed 500,000 and 5,000,000 domains affected and serving malware, respectively. A manual check of some 200 parked domains on the list showed that all of them were provided with the malware-serving widget." The researchers who uncovered this issue alerted Network Solutions, and the widget was taken down a few hours later.

Network Solutions

[ravenspear]

used to be the place to go for domains.

Now they are completely redundant.

At least they did the right thing

[Abstrackt]

"The researchers who uncovered this issue alerted Network Solutions, and the widget was taken down a few hours later."

Sucks that it happened, but at least they did something about it as soon as they found out.

Shrugged off, but root cause needs regulation

[vlueboy]

Sad that this malware problem is still not going to be enough to outlaw or reduce parked domains. Heck, network solutions doesn't even get a slap in the wrist for failing to check their modules.

Also, governments hate spending money on laws to regulate the internet... how about we let the current de-facto rulers of the internet do it: Search engines and browsers should do even more to stop malware domains from ever appearing in results or being reachable?

Re:Shrugged off, but root cause needs regulation

[rotide]

Once you start blocking "for the good of x" someone will come along and complain that "y" should be on that list too or yet another person will come along and claim that it is unfair that their site "x" was blocked. Staying neutral and allowing anything to be displayed as long as it is spider-able keeps them free of censoring/uncensoring and/or policing. Simply getting addons to your favorite browser and/or using a DNS that filters the way you like it are the best solutions.

Re:At least they did the right thing

[steveo777]

Can you imagine being the people who were responsible for the widget? Not that I like them, but they must be pretty proud that it worked for as long as it did...

Re:Network Solutions

[SpaceLifeForm]

Sure, and you have just provided evidence that you did not RTFA.

Re:Ad Muncher would have protected everyone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why pay $30 when Adblock is free?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865/ [mozilla.org]