Unintentionally distributed badware “may harm your computer”

Here’s an interesting blog post about a website which was hacked to distribute malware. This has also happened to me on my sites, and it’s a really insidious problem. More and more websites on the internet are dynamic. This typically means that they’re user collaborative. Social sites like Facebook and others are quickly expanding and becoming huge, open platforms. While this can be good, it also means a lot of potential attack points and a lot of serious risks, especially when personal information is involved. In the case of Facebook, there’s actually little protection for the users regarding what application developers can do. This is great because this gives developers a lot of flexibility to do truly innovative things. But the downside is pretty bad. Facebook has already taken steps against this by instituting spamminess filters, though these are not perfectly accurate. And as we try to protect users more and more, developers are going to lose the freedoms they once had.

It’s a fine balance.

On one hand, I’m very glad that more people are developing their own dynamic websites. On the other hand, I’m very concerned that they won’t be able to make their sites secure enough to be used in a production environment. Unfortunately, this is getting harder to do as software gets more features and exploits get more advanced. Is there anything we can do to guide this trend?