Malware-hosting sites

We’ve seen that a great source of data for malicious websites, like phishing sites and drive-by download sites, are internet search engines and popular web browsers. These data sources can also give us a glimpse into malware-hosting sites on the internet. I say a glimpse, because things can change very quickly as many attackers have become adept at covering their tracks and making it hard to find the infrastructure they use for their attacks. Remember, no one is omniscient. We have a bunch of data snapshots that we can stitch together over time to provide us with a glimpse of the threat landscape. Frequently, the landscape changes before researchers can collect, analyze, understand, and act on such data.

This is where the promise of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is helping – churning through massive amounts of complicated datasets much faster than humans can do this job manually. And, of course, attackers have also been...