Report: Malware-Laced Search Results 5-Times More Likely on Bing Than on Google

A study conducted by a German antivirus company, AV-Test, revealed that Bing was five times more likely to return malware-laced search results than Google was. The study evaluated almost 40 million websites where Bing delivered as much as five times more websites containing malware when compared directly to Google.

Within a scope of 10.9 million searches utilizing Google, 272 malware infected sites were delivered. When it came to the same amount of searches within Bing, 1,285 infected sites were returned in the recent study.

In examining the sites laced with malware, most had security vulnerability exploits in users' applications. Most of the vulnerabilities were ones seeking attacks on outdated browsers with older add-ons, extensions and outdated PDF readers. In such a case, it is further prof of how outdated software plays into cybercrooks exploiting vulnerabilities and infecting computers.
The chart below in Figure 1 clearly demonstrates the variance in malware found on Bing search results when compared to the same amount of sites tested on Google.

Figure 1. Top Websites Containing Malware Delivered by Search Engines - Source: AV-Test.org

AV-Test's evaluation of search engines used 36 different antivirus products to discover malicious content where the applications checked for certain suspicious characteristics, in addition to referencing an existing list of URLs previously identified to have malware.

Search engines continually update their efforts to combat malware and the hackers who employ malicious sites. The tasks of poisoning search engine results is still in full-force and could be one of the main culprits to Bing being five times more likely to return sites laced with malware. Basically, Google has had a longer run-in with such exploits and they have taken major strides to prevent such instances, which could be another reason for them having a lower rate of returning malicious sites than Bing.

In any given situation using search engines on the Internet, Google, Bing, Yahoo or others, computer users are urged to ensure that their systems are up to date using the most recent web browser applications, add-on extensions and antivirus/antispyware software.