On Friday the top story on the social bookmarking site reddit.comlinked to a website that downloaded malware onto visitors’ computers.Social bookmarking sites like Reddit and Digg link to stories ranked bythe popularity of these stories with their users. The malware on thesite appeared to be a variant of Trojan.ByteVerify that downloaded more malicious programs onto the users’ machines.
It is interesting to consider how effective in spreading malware alink on a social bookmarking site is. How many infections can beachieved by a story linked to a popular social bookmarking site thatinstalls malware on the viewer’s computer? The number of infections amalicious website can cause is the number of people who view thewebsite multiplied by the fraction of these viewers who are susceptibleto this malware.
