Comodo SiteInspector: Free Malware Scan & Blacklist Monitor

Another day, another innovative product from the security experts from Comodo. This time, it is free tool for protecting web sites from malware and blacklists.

Comodo, today released SiteInspector, a free malware scanning and blacklist monitoring for websites. The free service allows website owners to set up recurring, daily checks on any 3 pages of a domain. If malware is discovered or if the website is found on any one of a range of website blacklisting services, then the account owner is immediately notified via email. Comodo believe this early warning system will save thousands of innocent website owners per year from the potentially catastrophic effects of seeing their website blacklisted.

Traditionally, viruses and malware were activated only after proactive user interaction (for example, double clicking on an infected mail attachment). Unfortunately, hackers today are far more adept at distributing their malicious code and a ‘drive-by-download’ malware attack can be triggered simply because a user visits a web page. Perhaps more alarming is that the owner of the website can often be unaware that their site is hosting this malware.

Hackers use a wide variety of cross-site scripting (XSS) techniques to invisibly insert malicious code on target websites and in some cases, even use served ads as a delivery mechanism. Whatever the technique used, once a service like Google Safe Browsing, PhishTank or Malwaredomainlist discovers malware on a site, they will place it on their official blacklist. In the case of the massively influential Google, this can be a devasting reputation and traffic killer for the website in question as all visitors will be shown a warning message stating ‘Visiting this site may harm your computer’.

The free service includes:

SiteInspector tests webpages for malware from a ‘customer’s point of view’. To do this, it downloads all specified pages and runs them in a sandboxed browser environment. If the browser attempts to execute a malicious activity; crashes; downloads a suspicious file; changes registry entries or exhibits behavior consistent with malware, then its flagged as malicious. A notification email will also be sent to the account holder.

“SiteInspector dramatically reduces the time between problem identification to problem resolution for business websites.” Said Melih Abduhayoglu, Comodo CEO and Chief Architect. “No longer will businesses have to wait for angry customers to complain that their website contains malicious content. To take advantage of this essential service, webmasters just need to take a few minutes to sign up and configure the service. SiteInspector will do the rest.”

SiteInspector technology is also built into Comodo’s secure Internet Browser, Comodo Dragon. User’s can quickly run a malware scan on the page they are visiting by clicking the Site Inspector icon at the top right of the Dragon interface.

Website owners interested in enrolling their website for the service can sign up free at Siteinspector.comodo.com/public

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