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When we click on a hyperlink we really have no idea if the site on the other end is safe. When I go there will I find spyware, a virus infected file, a browser exploit…who knows? I’m pretty paranoid when I “surf” the web. Anytime I go adventuring on the web I am doing it thru a Firefox browser running on a Link Virtual Machine. To take a step further, the VM is connected to an access point in it’s own VLAN. So if it does get p0wned it can’t do any damage on my internal network. Yes, this is my home network

LinkScanner
I saw this post by Brian Krebs who writes on Security for the Washington Post. If you don’t follow his column you should. Brian mentions a site called LinkScanner from Exploit Labs. LinkScanner allows you to enter a URL and it will check to see if there are any nasty things hiding there. I’ve been using this site for a while and it has alerted me of a couple sites with malware.

McAfee Site Advisor
McAfee offers the Site Advisor service to determine if a website has malicious content. They use a Red / Yellow / Green color scheme to visualize if a site is Bad, Unknown, or Good. If you happen to use Internet Explorer they have a plugin that will display the Site Advisor rating of the page you are on in the lower right of the browser. I’ve used SA quite a bit and it seems to be a solid tool.

Dr. Web
The Russian AV company Dr. Web has released browser plugins for Firefox, IE and Opera. These plugins allow you to scan a site for malware before visiting it. Right clicking on a link gives you the option to scan it for malware. I have not had a chance to use their tools yet so I can’t vouch for their quality.

Google
When you click on a link from a Google search (or cache I think?), a warning page will be displayed if the site is determinted to have malicious content. This is possble through a partnership with www.stopbadware.org. Several prominent people including Vint Cerf and Ari Schwartz are involved with StopBadware.org.

There are probably other I have missed. If you know of any please let me know and I will post them here.

–Chris

Technorati Tags: SiteScanner, Malware, spyware, Site Advisor, Exploit Labs