Press Releases
INTERNET ENTREPRENEUR TOM RYAN USES LINKSCANNER TO KEEP
HIS ONLINE STORE AND CUSTOMERS SAFE FROM MALWARE
Real-Time Web Page Inspection Tips the Balance in Favor of LinkScanner
August 20, 2007 – Atlanta, GA - Tom Ryan, founder of ScienceForTheStars.com, a popular online store for science kits, toys and activity books, saw a problem coming down the road. Computing newsletters were warning that cybercriminals were poisoning innocent websites like his and using them to install malicious software onto the computers of unsuspecting visitors. This malicious software could then steal passwords and credit card numbers from his customers, causing them to lose confidence in his business.
“Everyone has anti-virus solutions these days, and most people know that they shouldn’t open attachments from unsolicited emails,” Ryan said from his office in Fort Myers, Florida. “But how many people know that their computer can be easily infected with malicious code simply by visiting a website from search engine results? Clearly I needed to find something that would protect my site from this new type of attack and keep my customers safe.”
Ryan found his solution in the weekly CNET security newsletter that had initially alerted him to the potential problem.
“I hadn’t heard of anything like this before I read about it,” Ryan said. “The newsletter had a review of new security applications called safe surfing solutions. According to the newsletter, these applications scan websites and provide users with visual cues rating the potential safety level of those sites. It was exactly what I was looking for to prevent my site from getting infected accidentally.”
Ryan first checked out McAfee’s SiteAdvisor but, after reading the reviews and user comments on the CNET site, he chose to go with Exploit Prevention Labs’ LinkScanner Pro because it was the only product to provide real-time protection at the moment he clicked on a hyperlink. SiteAdvisor, by contrast, appeared to rely on a limited database of suspicious sites, and would be unable to tell him definitively if a page he was about to visit would deliver a “drive-by download” of malicious code.
Exploit Prevention Labs, an Atlanta-based security startup, designed LinkScanner to sit in the background on any Windows PC and scan web pages and hyperlinks in real-time, ensuring immediate protection from exploits at the only time that matters - when a user is about to click on them.
“The threat of getting nailed by a drive-by download is very real,” said Roger Thompson, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Exploit Prevention Labs. “Cybercriminals are very active on the web, always on the look-out for an opportunity to steal valuable information like passwords and credit card numbers. Smaller e-commerce sites like SciencefortheStars.com are particularly vulnerable because they don’t generally have the kind of heavy-duty security armor the big guys have.”
“When I’m using Google, Yahoo and other search engines to find new products for the store, LinkScanner lets me see if the sites I want to visit are safe, or if they contain potential threats,” Ryan explained. “For me, this is absolutely invaluable. The last thing I need is for my store to be giving customers more than they bargained for when they stop by. It’s a simple preemptive solution to a potentially damaging and costly problem. I’ve also decided to add LinkScanner Online to my site as a free service to my customers.”
Organized Cybercrime on the Rise
In the past, cybercriminals wrote malware mainly for the thrill. But today cybercriminals, mostly in Russia and China, are buying and selling malware in online trading exchanges and distributing it for profit. Cybercriminals are hijacking search engines, broadcasting phishing scams that steal online banking and other confidential information, and distributing malware through social networking sites like MySpace, potentially robbing businesses and consumers of billions of dollars each year.
In April of this year, Google security experts published a research paper appropriately titled “Ghost in the Browser”. The paper presented a detailed high-level analysis of website exploitation and drive-by downloads. The researchers analyzed 4.5 million web pages and concluded that 450,000, or 10 percent, of those pages were successfully launching drive-by downloads. Another 700,000 sites were found to be questionable from a security perspective.
“There's no doubt that the web is the new battleground,” says Thompson. “The bad guys are getting really good at infecting large numbers of innocent websites over a very short period of time, then closing up shop and moving on to the next target, before more traditional security solutions can identify and protect against them. New solutions like LinkScanner are effective at protecting users against these transient “now you see them, now you don’t” threats.”
About Science for the Stars
Science Store for the Stars is an internet store selling high-quality, affordable science kits and toys, science activity books, games, telescopes, microscopes, and other science related products for the healthy development of young scientific minds. Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Robotics, and Dinosaurs are just a few of the many topic areas on the site; there’s even an Alternative ‘Green’ Energy section with the newest in fuel cell car and other solar energy kits, as well as a Fun’n’Funky section containing science kits that don’t easily fit into an existing category. Although most products are aimed at ages 3 to 16, science fans of all ages will find something to entertain and educate. ScienceStoreForTheStars.com is an ideal resource for homeschooling activities, science fair projects, or just plain old science-fun! Parents who want to enhance or participate in their children’s education will appreciate these educational products, and maybe learning something themselves.
About LinkScanner Pro
LinkScanner Pro (free 15-day trial: http://www.explabs.com/downloads/LSP), a $29.95 safe surfing application, provides real-time, automatic protection against malicious web sites, drive-by downloads and other exploits for Windows 2000, XP and Vista PCs running IE or Firefox browsers and Google, MSN and Yahoo search engines.
About Exploit Prevention Labs
Founded by information security veterans Bob Bales and Roger Thompson in 2005, Exploit Prevention Labs develops the LinkScanner family of safe surfing software and services. LinkScanner Pro, LinkScanner Lite and LinkScanner Online provide patent-pending protection against malicious web sites and web-based exploits during the critical risk window between the announcement of a security vulnerability and the installation of a patch by the user. The company also offers a Software Development Kit that enables third-party vendors to incorporate LinkScanner technology into their own applications. More information about Exploit Prevention Labs and LinkScanner may be found on the company’s website at http://www.explabs.com.
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Media Contact:
Bryan Ferraro
Dovetail Public Relations
408.395.3600
xpl at dovetailpr.com
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