Suspicious software is downloaded for a few cents

A survey by Carnegie Mellon University and Pennsylvania showed that it only takes a few cents to reach a good number of PCs with malicious software.

 

The researchers used Mechanincal Turk, a service from Amazon, which allows a contractor to get people to do things impossible for software: they hired people to run a program without a defined purpose for a period of one hour, to receive a code and, later the payment. The work was just presented as "make money doing nothing".

 

Offering a penny payment was enough for 141 people, nearly half of the 291 who viewed the offer, to download the application that asks for permissions to access the user's computer. Almost half (64) ran the app for an hour and sent the key to get paid. When the proposal offered a dollar for each user, 67% of the 1105 people downloaded the app, with 64% running the app to the end. . 

 

The survey concluded that, although 70% of the survey participants responded that it is dangerous to run an unknown application on their systems, a paltry amount was enough for most of them to compromise the security of their PCs.

 

Look on here the study report in English.

 

Source: Uol