4 ms·

What am I missing here? Why is google involved with this? Normally, you contact the abuse contact in the domain's whois or the IPs abuse contact. If they are on

by _8j50 4y ago

What am I missing here? Why is google involved with this? Normally, you contact the abuse contact in the domain's whois or the IPs abuse contact. If they are on a bullet proof host, your only avenue for a take down is government agencies. (Edit: you can also ask the RIR to reclaim the subnet but I've never heard of that actually being done for reasons I am not fully sure about) What does google have to do with content take down? Even for delisting them from results you have other search engines people use and threat actors can and do use redirectors when that becomes an issue. It is whack-a-mole, best they can do is beat the TA's SEO unless they have a lot of time and resources.

angry_octet 4y ago
Google has by far the majority of searches (in this category, not counting eBay/marketplace/insta searches). Delisting or even pushing to the second page would drastically reduce the effectiveness of such malware campaigns. There are a number of super important software tools that big platform vendors have been obstinate or hostile to supporting or securing. VLC and putty spring to mind.
- _8j50 4y ago
  I repond to incidents where SEO is being used to selectively target users and compromise their network (typical ransomware gangs these days). VLC maybe special to certain types of users but I assure you there are many SEO optimizes malware delivery campaigns. Google is not a people company, they won't devote human resources for this nor would they implicitly accept responsibility for the content of search results by actively taking things down. This isn't how the internet works. Search engines search stuff, name servers host domains, etc... everyone has their role. Keep in mind, they won't give up and go home because google delisted something, they will just move on to a different domain. Google will not commit resources for vlc alone like that. Another thing I forgot to mention earlier is VLC can literally take over the domain themselves after a court filing based on US cybersquatting law (.com is US jurisdiction).
  - angry_octet 4y ago
    You're viewing this a binary outcome of "will delisting block all malware results". Of course it won't, and it doesn't have to. This fight is never ending, and we need small victories. Google doesn't need to be a customer service company to do this. In fact, the opposite, they need to be a search engine company. Some domain names, IPs and site content have associations with software products, but at present Google only extends the protection of being an authoritative source to some products. Google also own Virus Total, they know which files are malware. So they can know which sites are full of malware, they just don't alter the search rankings to reflect that. As to legalities, VLC playing whack a mole in the US courts is expensive and pointless, the time scale is so long they would easily switch to the backup domain. But that doesn't work with crawling -- to appear in a result you need to be indexed.
    - _8j50 4y ago
      You have good points but you are missing mine: Google doesn't owe anyone the service of removing malicious results. If it is in their own best interest to do so, that is their business. You can't demand they remove this content, the only people who can are their actual customers of google search: advertisers! The people responsible for the malware removal have abuse contacts and if they don't you kinda have to follow SOP with legal and law enforcement avenues. Just how it works. Even the FBI let's you report internet crime, you can scream at google but law enforcement and webhosts/ISPs(transit providers) are more likely to respond and do something. Vlc doesn't have a fat wallet so your point about the cours is true, but if a lawyer will do pro-bono for them, it's an easy open-and-shut case. Yes, google owns VT but you won't even see long standing malicious site verdicts in VT make it to safebrowsing, if they won't even do that, do you think people screaming on twitter is something they listen to? I hope so, but unlikely and a waste of time other than for rage scrollers.
      - angry_octet 4y ago
        I think google is suffering big company problems. I think a lot of googlers want to penalise malicious sites but it's a second tier goal for the search team, who are getting hammered constantly by other players trying to alter rankings. Obviously a few open source projects complaining won't move the needle much, but law enforcement and cyber agencies do have big requirements for improving resilience to these attacks (and supply chain especially). Improving the consumer supply chain security is a big government goal in many countries.
hackernewds 4y ago
Also introduces the issue of subjectivity and Google being the arbiter of truth and success
- bobsmooth 4y ago
  In this case, there's a very obvious standard of objectivity. There is one true VLC homepage and there are a multitude of malware clones of the website. I feel as though Google should be able to differentiate between them.
Borgz 4y ago
Google is involved because they are being paid to link to these websites as advertisements. Since these are ads, and ads appear above regular search results on Google, they will appear above videolan.org, no matter how good VideoLAN's SEO is.
npteljes 4y ago
Google is involved because they operate the world's largest scam website checker, Safe Browsing, and their filter is baked into, and enabled by default in all of the modern mainstream browsers. Search results are one thing, going on this list would mean that the browser wouldn't open the page. https://safebrowsing.google.com/ https://safebrowsing.google.com/
- _8j50 4y ago
  I know what safebrowsing is, it has a proper reporting system and it is for Chrome users not Google search.
  - npteljes 4y ago
    Not just. It is for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge users, and I suspect that other browsers use it too. Google doesn't react to the reports. OOP talks about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33728767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33728767 Also the websites are reported on Google Search, and the malicious ads too.

by _8j50 4y ago

angry_octet 4y ago

Google has by far the majority of searches (in this category, not counting eBay/marketplace/insta searches). Delisting or even pushing to the second page would drastically reduce the effectiveness of such malware campaigns. There are a number of super important software tools that big platform vendors have been obstinate or hostile to supporting or securing. VLC and putty spring to mind.

_8j50 4y ago
I repond to incidents where SEO is being used to selectively target users and compromise their network (typical ransomware gangs these days). VLC maybe special to certain types of users but I assure you there are many SEO optimizes malware delivery campaigns. Google is not a people company, they won't devote human resources for this nor would they implicitly accept responsibility for the content of search results by actively taking things down. This isn't how the internet works. Search engines search stuff, name servers host domains, etc... everyone has their role. Keep in mind, they won't give up and go home because google delisted something, they will just move on to a different domain. Google will not commit resources for vlc alone like that. Another thing I forgot to mention earlier is VLC can literally take over the domain themselves after a court filing based on US cybersquatting law (.com is US jurisdiction).
- angry_octet 4y ago
  You're viewing this a binary outcome of "will delisting block all malware results". Of course it won't, and it doesn't have to. This fight is never ending, and we need small victories. Google doesn't need to be a customer service company to do this. In fact, the opposite, they need to be a search engine company. Some domain names, IPs and site content have associations with software products, but at present Google only extends the protection of being an authoritative source to some products. Google also own Virus Total, they know which files are malware. So they can know which sites are full of malware, they just don't alter the search rankings to reflect that. As to legalities, VLC playing whack a mole in the US courts is expensive and pointless, the time scale is so long they would easily switch to the backup domain. But that doesn't work with crawling -- to appear in a result you need to be indexed.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    You have good points but you are missing mine: Google doesn't owe anyone the service of removing malicious results. If it is in their own best interest to do so, that is their business. You can't demand they remove this content, the only people who can are their actual customers of google search: advertisers! The people responsible for the malware removal have abuse contacts and if they don't you kinda have to follow SOP with legal and law enforcement avenues. Just how it works. Even the FBI let's you report internet crime, you can scream at google but law enforcement and webhosts/ISPs(transit providers) are more likely to respond and do something. Vlc doesn't have a fat wallet so your point about the cours is true, but if a lawyer will do pro-bono for them, it's an easy open-and-shut case. Yes, google owns VT but you won't even see long standing malicious site verdicts in VT make it to safebrowsing, if they won't even do that, do you think people screaming on twitter is something they listen to? I hope so, but unlikely and a waste of time other than for rage scrollers.
    - angry_octet 4y ago
      I think google is suffering big company problems. I think a lot of googlers want to penalise malicious sites but it's a second tier goal for the search team, who are getting hammered constantly by other players trying to alter rankings. Obviously a few open source projects complaining won't move the needle much, but law enforcement and cyber agencies do have big requirements for improving resilience to these attacks (and supply chain especially). Improving the consumer supply chain security is a big government goal in many countries.

hackernewds 4y ago

Also introduces the issue of subjectivity and Google being the arbiter of truth and success

bobsmooth 4y ago
In this case, there's a very obvious standard of objectivity. There is one true VLC homepage and there are a multitude of malware clones of the website. I feel as though Google should be able to differentiate between them.

Borgz 4y ago

Google is involved because they are being paid to link to these websites as advertisements. Since these are ads, and ads appear above regular search results on Google, they will appear above videolan.org, no matter how good VideoLAN's SEO is.

npteljes 4y ago

Google is involved because they operate the world's largest scam website checker, Safe Browsing, and their filter is baked into, and enabled by default in all of the modern mainstream browsers. Search results are one thing, going on this list would mean that the browser wouldn't open the page. https://safebrowsing.google.com/ https://safebrowsing.google.com/

_8j50 4y ago
I know what safebrowsing is, it has a proper reporting system and it is for Chrome users not Google search.
- npteljes 4y ago
  Not just. It is for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge users, and I suspect that other browsers use it too. Google doesn't react to the reports. OOP talks about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33728767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33728767 Also the websites are reported on Google Search, and the malicious ads too.