Google was Crowned 'King of Malware' in Analysis

By Marcus Yam
published

But only because Google is tops in search.

Googles strength and popularity on the internet play parts in crowing the search company as the "king of malware" by security company Barracuda Networks.

Barracuda Networks analyzed 25,000 trending topics over 5.5 million search results and found that Google accounted for 69 percent of all malware found. Yahoo accounted for 18 percent, while Bing (which supplies Yahoo search) had 12 percent. Twitter made up the remaining 1 percent.

The distribution could be partially attributed to the popularity of the search engines. According to comScore, 62.6 percent of all U.S. search traffic is from Google, 18.9 percent is from Yahoo and 12.7 percent is from Bing.

Google is also the quickest search engine in picking up new trend topics from Twitter, taking only 1.2 days to be indexed by the search engine. It takes 4.3 days on Bing and 4.8 days on Yahoo.

(Source: PC World.)

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
Topics
Security
30 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Camikazi
    OK, so the top search engine gives access to the most malware, seems logical to me really. Just shows you can't be an idiot and just click whatever website pops up on Google (or Bing or Yahoo), gotta protect yourself and make sure before you go to unknown sites.
    Reply
  • casperstouch
    This sounds to me like a self-fulfilling prophecy. People use google more often therefore more people get malware from it. But what is the percentage of using it and getting malware, if you use any of them and search for the same thing?
    Reply
  • Dirtman73
    I keep tellin yall that Skynet is a force for evil, but yall dont wanna listen!

    Get off my lawn!!!
    Reply
  • awan2009
    It's obvious.
    Reply
  • triculious
    yes, we know, most people LACK common sense... that's why the most used software is often the most vulnerable to malware
    not because it is bad but because it becomes the target to a great number of threats
    Reply
  • orionantares
    So Google is the "King of Malware" because people have malware on their sites which are indexed in search engines and Google is the most commonly used search engine?

    That's some rather projecting logic since none of the malware actually comes FROM Google or Yahoo or Bing for that matter.
    Reply
  • victomofreality
    WOOT Google is the king again! Doesn't matter what it is as long as your the best right?
    Reply
  • rottingsheep
    use yahoo and you wont easily get what you are looking for
    Reply
  • in other news, a study finds the majority of traffic accidents involves cars.....
    Reply
  • IM0001
    The main problem with Google is it does not filter anything when it comes to its Sponsored ad's. Almost all the Sponsored Ad's are 100% scam sites or sites filled with malware. Bing is not perfect in this area but they do a much better job of keeping crap out in their searches.
    Reply