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Google Online Security Blog: July 2015
Security Blog
The latest news and insights from Google on security and safety on the Internet
New research: Comparing how security experts and non-experts stay safe online
July 23, 2015
Posted by
Iulia Ion, Software Engineer - Rob Reeder, Research Scientist - Sunny Consolvo, User Experience Researcher
Today, you can find more online security tips in a few seconds than you could use in a lifetime. While this collection of best practices is rich, it’s not always useful; it can be difficult to know which ones to prioritize, and why.
Questions like ‘Why do people make some security choices (and not others)?’ and ‘How effectively does the security community communicate its best practices?’ are at the heart of a new paper called, “...no one can hack my mind”: Comparing Expert and Non-Expert Security Practices” that we’ll present this week at the
Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security
.
This paper outlines the results of two surveys—one with 231 security experts, and another with 294 web-users who aren’t security experts—in which we asked both groups what they do to stay safe online. We wanted to compare and contrast responses from the two groups, and better understand differences and why they may exist.
Experts’ and non-experts’ top 5 security practices
Here are experts’ and non-experts’ top security practices, according to our study. We asked each participant to list 3 practices:
Common ground: careful password management
Clearly, careful password management is a priority for both groups. But, they differ on their approaches.
Security experts rely heavily on password managers, services that store and protect all of a user’s passwords in one place. Experts reported using password managers, for at least some of their accounts, three-times more frequently than non-experts.
As one expert said, “Password managers change the whole calculus because they make it possible to have both strong and unique passwords.”
On the other hand, only 24% of non-experts reported using password managers for at least some of their accounts, compared to 73% of experts. Our findings suggested this was due to lack of education about the benefits of password managers and/or a perceived lack of trust in these programs. “I try to remember my passwords because no one can hack my mind,” one non-expert told us.
Key differences: software updates and antivirus software
Despite some overlap, experts’ and non-experts’ top answers were remarkably different.
35% of experts and only 2% of non-experts said that installing software updates was one of their top security practices. Experts recognize the benefits of updates—“Patch, patch, patch,” said one expert—while non-experts not only aren’t clear on them, but are concerned about the potential risks of software updates. A non-expert told us: “I don’t know if updating software is always safe. What [if] you download malicious software?” and “Automatic software updates are not safe in my opinion, since it can be abused to update malicious content.”
Meanwhile, 42% of non-experts vs. only 7% of experts said that running antivirus software was one of the top three three things they do to stay safe online. Experts acknowledged the benefits of antivirus software, but expressed concern that it might give users a false sense of security since it’s not a bulletproof solution.
Next Steps
In the immediate term, we encourage everyone to read the
full research paper
, borrow experts’ top practices, and also check out our tips for
keeping your information safe on Google
.
More broadly, our findings highlight fundamental misunderstandings about basic online security practices. Software updates, for example, are the seatbelts of online security; they make you safer, period. And yet, many non-experts not only overlook these as a best practice, but also mistakenly worry that software updates are a security risk.
No practice on either list—expert or non-expert—makes users less secure. But, there is clearly room to improve how security best practices are prioritized and communicated to the vast majority of (non expert) users. We’re looking forward to tackling that challenge.
Working Together to Filter Automated Data-Center Traffic
July 21, 2015
Posted by Vegard Johnsen, Product Manager Google Ad Traffic Quality
Today the
Trustworthy Accountability Group
(TAG)
announced
a new pilot blacklist to protect advertisers across the industry. This blacklist comprises data-center IP addresses associated with non-human ad requests. We're happy to support this effort along with other industry leaders—Dstillery, Facebook, MediaMath, Quantcast, Rubicon Project, TubeMogul and Yahoo—and contribute our own data-center blacklist. As mentioned to
Ad Age
and in our recent
call to action
, we believe that if we work together we can raise the fraud-fighting bar for the whole industry.
Data-center traffic is one of
many types
of non-human or illegitimate ad traffic. The newly shared blacklist identifies web robots or “bots” that are being run in data centers but that avoid detection by the
IAB/ABC International Spiders & Bots List
. Well-behaved bots announce that they're bots as they surf the web by including a bot identifier in their declared User-Agent strings. The bots filtered by this new blacklist are different. They masquerade as human visitors by using User-Agent strings that are indistinguishable from those of typical web browsers.
In this post, we take a closer look at a few examples of data-center traffic to show why it’s so important to filter this traffic across the industry.
Impact of the data-center blacklist
When observing the traffic generated by the IP addresses in the newly shared blacklist, we found significantly distorted click metrics. In May of 2015 on DoubleClick Campaign Manager alone, we found the blacklist filtered 8.9% of all clicks. Without filtering these clicks from campaign metrics, advertiser click-through rates would have been incorrect and for some advertisers this error would have been very large.
Below is a plot that shows how much click-through rates in May would have been inflated across the most impacted of DoubleClick Campaign Manager’s larger advertisers.
Two examples of bad data-center traffic
There are two distinct types of invalid data-center traffic: where the intent is malicious and where the impact on advertisers is accidental. In this section we consider two interesting examples where we’ve observed traffic that was likely generated with malicious intent.
Publishers use many different strategies to increase the traffic to their sites. Unfortunately, some are willing to use any means necessary to do so. In our investigations we’ve seen instances where publishers have been running software tools in data centers to intentionally mislead advertisers with fake impressions and fake clicks.
First example
UrlSpirit is just one example of software that some unscrupulous publishers have been using to collaboratively drive automated traffic to their websites. Participating publishers install the UrlSpirit application on Windows machines and they each submit up to three URLs through the application’s interface. Submitted URLs are then distributed to other installed instances of the application, where Internet Explorer is used to automatically visit the list of target URLs. Publishers who have not installed the application can also leverage the network of installations by paying a fee.
At the end of May more than 82% of the UrlSpirit installations were being run on machines in data centers. There were more than 6,500 data-center installations of UrlSpirit, with each data-center installation running in a separate virtual machine. In aggregate, the data-center installations of UrlSpirit were generating a monthly rate of at least half a billion ad requests— an average of 2,500 fraudulent ad requests per installation per day.
Second example
HitLeap is another example of software that some publishers are using to collaboratively drive automated traffic to their websites. The software also runs on Windows machines, and each instance uses the Chromium Embedded Framework to automatically browse the websites of participating publishers—rather than using Internet Explorer.
Before publishers can use the network of installations to drive traffic to their websites, they need browsing minutes. Participating publishers earn browsing minutes by running the application on their computers. Alternatively, they can simply buy browsing minutes—with bundles starting at $9 for 10,000 minutes or up to 1,000,000 minutes for $625.
Publishers can specify as many target URLs as they like. The number of visits they receive from the network of installations is a function of how long they want the network of bots to spend on their sites. For example, ten browsing minutes will get a publisher five visits if the publisher requests two-minute visit durations.
In mid-June, at least 4,800 HitLeap installations were being run in virtual machines in data centers, with a unique IP associated with each HitLeap installation. The data-center installations of HitLeap made up 16% of the total HitLeap network, which was substantially larger than the UrlSpirit network.
In aggregate, the data-center installations of HitLeap were generating a monthly rate of at least a billion fraudulent ad requests—or an average of 1,600 ad requests per installation per day.
Not only were these publishers collectively responsible for billions of automated ad requests, but their websites were also often extremely deceptive. For example, of the top ten webpages visited by HitLeap bots in June, nine of these included
hidden ad slots
-- meaning that not only was the traffic fake, but the ads couldn’t have been seen even if they had been legitimate human visitors.
http://vedgre.com/7/gg.html
is illustrative of these nine webpages with hidden ad slots. The webpage has no visible content other than a single 300×250px ad. This visible ad is actually in a 300×250px iframe that includes two ads, the second of which is hidden. Additionally, there are also twenty-seven 0×0px hidden iframes on this page with each hidden iframe including two ad slots. In total there are fifty-five hidden ads on this page and one visible ad. Finally, the ads served on
http://vedgre.com/7/gg.html
appear to advertisers as though they have been served on legitimate websites like indiatimes.com, scotsman.com, autotrader.co.uk, allrecipes.com, dictionary.com and nypost.com, because the tags used on
http://vedgre.com/7/gg.html
to request the ad creatives have been deliberately spoofed.
An example of collateral damage
Unlike the traffic described above, there is also automated data-center traffic that impacts advertising campaigns but that hasn’t been generated for malicious purposes. An interesting example of this is an advertising competitive intelligence company that is generating a large volume of undeclared non-human traffic.
This company uses bots to scrape the web to find out which ad creatives are being served on which websites and at what scale. The company’s scrapers also click ad creatives to analyse the landing page destinations. To provide its clients with the most accurate possible intelligence, this company’s scrapers operate at extraordinary scale and they also do so without including bot identifiers in their User-Agent strings.
While the aim of this company is not to cause advertisers to pay for fake traffic, the company’s scrapers do waste advertiser spend. They not only generate non-human impressions; they also distort the metrics that advertisers use to evaluate campaign performance—in particular, click metrics. Looking at the data across DoubleClick Campaign Manager this company’s scrapers were responsible for 65% of the automated data-center clicks recorded in the month of May.
Going forward
Google has always invested to prevent this and other types of invalid traffic from entering our ad platforms. By contributing our data-center blacklist to TAG, we hope to help others in the industry protect themselves.
We’re excited by the collaborative spirit we’ve seen working with other industry leaders on this initiative. This is an important, early step toward tackling fraudulent and illegitimate inventory across the industry and we look forward to sharing more in the future. By pooling our collective efforts and working with industry bodies, we can create strong defenses against those looking to take advantage of our ecosystem. We look forward to working with the TAG Anti-fraud working group to turn this pilot program into an industry-wide tool.
Google, the Wassenaar Arrangement, and vulnerability research
July 20, 2015
Posted by
Neil Martin, Export Compliance Counsel,
Google Legal
Tim Willis, Hacker Philanthropist, Chrome Security Team
Cross-posted on the
Google Public Policy Blog
As the usage and complexity of software grows, the importance of security research has grown with it. It’s through diligent research that we uncover and fix bugs — like
Heartbleed
and
POODLE
— that can cause serious security issues for web users around the world.
The time and effort it takes to uncover bugs is significant, and the marketplace for these vulnerabilities is competitive. That’s why we provide cash rewards for quality security research that identifies problems in our own products or proactive improvements to open-source products. We’ve
paid
more than $4 million to researchers from all around the world - our current Hall of Fame includes researchers from Germany, the U.S., Japan, Brazil, and more than 30 other countries.
Problematic new export controls
With the benefits of security research in mind, there has been some public
head scratching
and
analysis
around
proposed export control rules
put forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce that would negatively affect vulnerability research.
The Commerce Department's proposed rules stem from U.S. membership in the
Wassenaar Arrangement
, a multilateral export control association. Members of the Wassenaar Arrangement have agreed to control a wide range of goods, software, and information, including technologies relating to "intrusion software" (as they've defined that term).
We believe that these proposed rules, as currently written, would have a significant negative impact on the open security research community. They would also hamper our ability to defend ourselves, our users, and make the web safer. It would be a disastrous outcome if an export regulation intended to make people more secure resulted in billions of users across the globe becoming persistently less secure.
Google comments on proposed rules
Earlier today, we formally submitted comments on the proposed rules to the United States Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). Our comments are lengthy, but we wanted to share some of the main concerns and questions that we have officially expressed to the U.S. government today:
Rules are dangerously broad and vague.
The proposed rules are not feasible and would require Google to request thousands - maybe even tens of thousands - of export licenses. Since Google operates in many different countries, the controls could cover our communications about software vulnerabilities, including: emails, code review systems, bug tracking systems, instant messages - even some in-person conversations!
BIS’ own FAQ
states that information about a vulnerability, including its causes, wouldn’t be controlled, but we believe that it sometimes actually could be controlled information.
You should never need a license when you report a bug to get it fixed.
There should be standing license exceptions for everyone when controlled information is reported back to manufacturers for the purposes of fixing a vulnerability. This would provide protection for security researchers that report vulnerabilities, exploits, or other controlled information to any manufacturer or their agent.
Global companies should be able to share information globally.
If we have information about intrusion software, we should be able to share that with our engineers, no matter where they physically sit.
Clarity is crucial.
We acknowledge that we have a team of lawyers here to help us out, but navigating these controls shouldn’t be that complex and confusing. If BIS is going to implement the proposed controls, we recommend providing a simple, visual flowchart for everyone to easily understand when they need a license.
These controls should be changed ASAP.
The only way to fix the scope of the intrusion software controls is to do it at the annual meeting of Wassenaar Arrangement members in December 2015.
We’re committed to working with BIS to make sure that both white hat security researchers’ interests and Google users’ interests are front of mind. The proposed BIS rule for public comment is available
here
, and comments can also be sent directly to
publiccomments@bis.doc.gov
. If BIS publishes another proposed rule on intrusion software, we’ll make sure to come back and update this blog post with details.
More Visible Protection Against Unwanted Software
July 16, 2015
Posted by Moheeb Abu Rajab and Stephan Somogyi, Google Safe Browsing Team
Last year, we announced our
increased focus on unwanted software (UwS)
, and
published our unwanted software policy
. This work is the direct result of our users falling prey to UwS, and how badly it was affecting their browsing experience. Since then, Google Safe Browsing’s ability to detect deceptive software has steadily improved.
In the coming weeks, these detection improvements will become more noticeable in Chrome: users will see more
warnings
(like the one below) about unwanted software than ever before.
We want to be really clear that Google Safe Browsing’s mandate remains unchanged: we’re exclusively focused on protecting users from malware, phishing, unwanted software, and similar harm. You won’t see Safe Browsing warnings for any other reasons.
Unwanted software is being distributed on web sites via a variety of sources,
including
ad
injectors
as well as ad networks lacking strict quality guidelines. In many cases, Safe Browsing within your browser is your last line of defense.
Google Safe Browsing has protected users from phishing and malware since 2006, and from unwanted software since 2014. We provide this protection across browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari) and across platforms (Windows, Mac OS X,
linux
, and Android). If you want to help us improve the defenses for everyone using a browser that integrates Safe Browsing, please consider checking the box that appears on all of our warning pages:
Safe Browsing’s focus is solely on protecting people and their data from badness. And nothing else.
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