Is that site malicious?

I know I promised my next article would be how to create a malware lab with VMWare. I had to side step for a moment for an idea that came to me from one of my avid readers (Thanks Sara! :))

Some who read my blog don't know a whole bunch about security or possibly computers in general. They have come to enjoy the things that the Internet and systems can do for them. This is great! I encourage all to see what can be done to learn and do things on the computer. This does raise some issues though.

With all of the good stuff on the web, there is also a bunch of bad stuff. I get the question a lot of how to know if a site is legit. This is not completely clear cut, but I wanted to share some links with everyone so they can do some testing of the sites before going or returning.

I will start with some links I use to check sites:

AVG Link Scanner
Finjan URL Analysis
Norton Safe Web
Malware Domain List

I normally run a URL through those to see if the sight may or may not be malicious. This isn't all I do, but the rest is a little difficult without more advanced understanding of web site code. I would like to say that this isn't a guarantee either. It is just another thing to do to check. If you ever need a site analyzed and you want to know my opinion, just email me at cshaffer(remove this and change at to @)atgmail.com. I would be more than happy to check it out for you.

There are other sites where you can check the validity as well. Here is my final link with links from above and more in case you want to really check.

Lenny Zeltser: Fighting Malicious Software

Enjoy and please reach out if you have any questions. Next post will be how to build a malware analysis lab with VMWare....I promise :)