Know your audience! and Never underestimate human stupidity! these are two ideas missed by Alex Eckelberry in his latest blog post. Before I give you the link, repeat after me: I’m not running as Administrator, I have my computer fully updated and I have an AV or HIPS product installed & up-to-date.

Now here is the link to the posting in question: Realtor.com promoting malware?. In it Alex not only gives a link to a site which (supposedly) contains references to malware, he actually solicits (albeit indirectly) the readers to check it out. To his defense the site itself is not malicious and only serves as proxy, and also most of his readers are somewhat knowledgeable in this area, however did he consider that:

• There could be other exploits served up
• Maybe not everyone is well protected / prepared?

I’m all for open research in the appropriate forums, but one should always weight the benefits against the risks of posting possibly harmful material to public forums.

Update: there was a bit of back and forth on the Sunbelt blog, with none of the parties admitting anything :). My final opinion is that the blog tries to ride two horses at one (or something like that): to serve both as a marketing vehicle and to be as responsible as possible, which can lead to conflicts of interest.