People who visit adult or gambling websites double their risk of malware

Visiting adult and gambling websites doubles the risk of inadvertently installing malware onto work devices, according to a new study.

Fabio Massacci at the University of Trento and Vrije University in Amsterdam presented the findings of a massive analysis of real-life data from around the world. The purpose was to try and identify what actions people make online that can result in their systems becoming clogged up with malware—and trying to provide ways to mitigate against the risks of that happening again.

The data was collected using telemetry analysis of corporate account users of Trend Micro’s system defense software who had opted in to improving the app’s services. In total, the researchers sampled around 20,000 entries from a possible 12 million they were provided by Trend Micro. The businesses that provided data covered the U.S., Japan, India, Brazil, Germany, France, the U.K., and Italy, and were chosen at random from the larger 12 million database of potential users.

By analyzing the data, Massacci and his colleagues identified a number of risk factors that could increase the likelihood of malware being installed. Generally, the more software a user accesses, the higher the risk they have of encountering viruses and ransomware. But there were distinct differences in what kinds of malware ended up on a system from which type of websites.

Those who visit gambling websites are more likely to encounter crypto coin miners. The data also allowed for in-depth analysis of how likely people were to encounter malware depending on when they used their computers; intensive use in night hours increased the risk of inadvertently installing malware.

“Both system behavior and content behavior increase the risk of encountering different types of malware,” says Massacci. But the researcher explained that it’s not possible to identify a single silver bullet to try and tamp down the risk of installing malware onto your devices precisely because of those intertwined behaviors that impact what kind of malware is installed.

For instance, while crypto miners were more likely to be deposited on systems that visited illicit gambling websites, trojans and hacking tools were more common when people visited porn websites. Websites that contained information on how to commit non-violent crimes were more likely than others to deposit similar hacking tools or other potentially unwanted applications on a system that can slow down its operation, or pop up ads that try to sell users products and services.

Being forewarned with this information means companies can be forearmed to try and mitigate the risks. “By knowing which user behaviors are associated with which classes of malware, an organization can proactively reduce its cybersecurity risks in a cost-effective manner for the specific malware threats they consider existential,” says Massacci.