Adware developers are probable to target the latest version of Internet Explorer with rising frequency in 2007, provoking a threat to user productivity, according to the Trend Micro chief technology officer for anti-spyware, Ed English.
In London this week with the firm's two other CTOs, Raimund Genes and Dave Rand, English told IT Week that adware companies will take advantage of the new features in IE7 to make money, such as the new tabbed browsing function, which can be hijacked to display the link to a committed adware site.
"IE7 will soon be the most dominant browser on the market, and it will offer new opportunities for exploits like 'tab-jacking'," he argued. "IE7 is also about to become the world's most popular RSS reader, so there is a chance for adware to be injected into RSS feeds."
The three also added their voices to the increasing number calling on ISPs to use better content-based filtering to clamp down on spam and to give security services alongside their basic connectivity packages.
"If the top 20 ISPs stopped sending spam we would see an order of magnitude less spam than currently," argued Rand. "Most US-based ISPs followed the lead of AOL and took the initiative, but most of the rest of the world hasn't caught on.”
