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Topic: Security

IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

Summary: Social engineering has become the dominant method of distribution for fake antivirus software these days. In my real-world testing with actual malware, Google Chrome did a terrible job of helping users avoid suspicious downloads. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer 9 correctly the exact same sites and files as suspicious. What's the difference?

Ed Bott

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You don't always get a warning from Chrome when you're about to download a potentially dangerous executable file. These two download prompts were captured minutes apart, for malware files that were minor variations of the same code.

For more details, see IE9 versus Chrome: which one blocks malware better?

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Topics: Security, Browser, Google, Microsoft, Social Enterprise

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14 comments
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  • RE: IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

    Whenever I see these kinds of pages, I don't hit any of the button selections offered on the page; I just do a hard shut down immediately (meaning, I hit the off button on my CPU). Is this the best approach?
    Skinhorse
    Reply Vote

    • RE: IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

      @Skinhorse - certainly the safest approach...
      gsvetov@...
      Reply Vote

    • RE: IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

      @Skinhorse LOL, definitely not, your best approach is either of the following

      1.) Navigate away from the malicious site (eg. open a clean new tab; close the malicious one) then <b>clear your browser's cache and cookies</b>

      2.) Restart your browser (close and re-open it; ensuring that the previous session is not set to be restored) then <b>clear your browser's cache and cookies</b>

      Hard shut down is like pulling the plug on your computer. If you keep doing that, you will end up damaging parts of your computer's hardware in one way or another. That sounds more costly than a virus :p
      MrElectrifyer
      Reply Vote

    • RE: IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

      @Skinhorse If you do a control alt delete and bring up taskmaster, you can stop the IE 9 in the applications window there. That should be safe as well.
      hayneiii@...
      Reply Vote

    • RE: IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

      @Skinhorse No, but it's a great way to break the registry, and other files that are currently in use.
      Roc Riz
      Reply Vote

    • RE: IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

      @Skinhorse - Just don't HOLD the button down to shut down. Pressing the button triggers a shutdown routine that beats hitting Start->Shutdown. If it DOES actually react when you press the power button, then good. Otherwise, only hold down the power button if it appears the virus has your computer already (freezing up, extremely slow). Instead of booting it back up, however, you may want to F8 during startup to get the Recovery screen, then go to command prompt and clear out all your temp directories (c:\windows\temp, c:\temp, c:\users\[username]\local settings\temp, or just do a dir /s /b /ad temp from the C:\ prompt to list all temp directories.)
      gary_yahoo
      Reply Vote

  • RE: IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

    I use Task Manager to close the browser because often the pop-up fake warning makes it difficult to navigate away from the page. On restarting the browser I clear the cache and cookies.
    rrj500
    Reply Vote

  • Ha ha. So IE9's big fancy security technology

    is "Oh it's New, with no reputation, thus it must be bad!". What a crock. Sounds like another veiled attempt to cut out open source and shareware from competing with M$. Call me when M$ comes up with real security technology. I'm still looking for a way to remove their useless MS Malicious software tool from my windows install -- which does nothing bu gobble up harddisk space and slow me down.
    Telexer
    Reply Vote

    • RE: IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

      @Telexer <i>"I'm still looking for a way to remove their useless MS Malicious software tool from my windows install -- which does nothing bu gobble up harddisk space and slow me down."</i>

      Huh? You sure you know what you're talking about noob? They release optional (well you don't have to check it even thought it's under the important) updates of those for a small range of severe computer threats on the second Tuesday of every month.

      It only runs once and alerts you if it detects one of those threats. If it doesn't, it seats in the your <b>"{system drive letter}:\Windows\System32"</b> directory as a 50 MB (roughly) file named <b><i>mrt.exe</i></b> which you can easily delete if it's taking that much % of space on your HDD.
      MrElectrifyer
      Reply Vote

  • RE: IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

    why not just install app kill-click gone to tool bar
    stever95691
    Reply Vote

  • RE: IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

    This is old information. The latt?s malware scam I got was security essentials 2011 on my XP computer, I do not know how it got on my system.
    Scatcatpdx
    Reply Vote

  • IE9 just as vulnerable as Chrome

    I just spent about half an hour searching for an infected site - and at last - found one - the link pasted below. <br><br>As claimed the Google security box popped up - so I did the obvious and just killed the process. <br><br>So I took the link - went to IE9 (both 32 and 64 bit) and got the same type of attack - just worded differently - i.e. your machine shows suspicious process ... yada yada yada. Was a bit harder to get rid of the process though as IE decided to restart itself and go back to the infected page twice before I could get it to stop - no fancy warnings as claimed. <br><br>So this just proves again - today's browsers cannot interpret these pages and warn us beforehand. The only solution is USE YOUR BRAIN - look at the link address - dont believe the cr@p that popups show you ....

    P.S. Seems like the link is just active for a couple of seconds - when I went back to do a screen print , it already changed to a new site - very clever - i.e. a botnet with a couple of zombies ..... so ignore the link ....
    <br><br><br>(<a href="http://scan12.pgecert.mo.cx/index.php?QxHhcdQfbedGenoEM7BF9yyLE/v4djf5oTHyRAdkpIjVji8qhNopElEqq4zgV1pBsEmmCyPLHxoytpzNo67OFUQzZa3JLO0AKckCmERf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://scan12.pgecert.mo.cx/index.php?QxHhcdQfbedGenoEM7BF9yyLE/v4djf5oTHyRAdkpIjVji8qhNopElEqq4zgV1pBsEmmCyPLHxoytpzNo67OFUQzZa3JLO0AKckCmERf</a>)
    vhawk
    Reply Vote

    • RE: IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

      @vhawk What worries me is IE pops up a legitimate looking dialog box with "Remove all" and "cancel" buttons. "Remove all" causes a file to be downloaded. How is this even possible? This is far worse than Chrome's behaviour which merely prompts to download a file. Browsers should not be able to pop up dialog boxes with any text the malware writers see fit.

      I've seen the site about with the fake Win7 "my computer" page. It also does a very scary animation apparently scanning your computer for viruses, though I suspect this is just a HTML animation.
      The Star King
      Reply Vote

  • RE: IE9 versus Google: which one handles social engineering attacks better?

    Seriously, the only reason why IE9 appears safer is it's so new the hackers are not really focusing on it. It makes more sense to hit the browsers with the large numbers rather than focus on the select few who took the initiative and downloaded IE9 beta. It's like trying to find malware for a Commodore 64. Not gonna find it. Not even the stoned virus of the 80's was written for that one.

    Give it some times and IE9 will outpace Google for virus activity, security holes, flaws, etc. Of this I am CERTAIN.
    gary_yahoo
    Reply Vote
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