From this year, eBay will open the doors on a new site offering malware scanning to its users as part of a raft of new features aimed at beating the phishers and virus writers.
The site, eBay Garage, will run an embedded application that will scan users' PCs for any viruses or spyware using up to date malware signatures.
If any malware is detected the user will be directed to the site of a security vendor that provides products to clean up the machine.
eBay is partnering with two, as yet unnamed, security companies on the project and the site is expected to launch imminently, eBay Marketplaces chief information security officer Dave Cullinane revealed.
Cullinane told ZDNet Asia's sister site Silicon.com that Garage and other technologies will help combat the recent "appalling" growth in malicious code, which has seen criminals focus their efforts on compromising the machines belonging to the site's users.
"Phishing seems to be tailoring off a little bit but the growth in the amount of malicious code out there is appalling," he said.
"As we are getting better at shutting off opportunities for criminals to exploit what is happening on our side they are moving to try and attack the customer end."
This year will also see eBay introduce Trustyear, technology aimed at fighting spoof eBay sites that steal users' logins or financial details.
The technology will look for any attempts to redirect users from eBay onto a spoof site and block the connection.
eBay has already introduced a number of security measures such as making user IDs anonymous when bidding, and Cullinane said eBay has seen the number of account takeovers, where a fraudster hijacks an eBay account, fall.
Cullinane also said the two-factor authentication that has been introduced at eBay-owned online payment service PayPal is proving to be popular among its users.
According to Cullinane, eBay is also considering introducing a federated identity system in future, which could simplify the log-in process by moving towards a single login across eBay and other sites and services.
Cullinane was speaking to ZDNet Asia's sister site Silicon.com following the publication of a report by RSA and the Security for Business Innovation Council into innovation in security, examining the information security challenges created by the current economic crisis.
While security will remain a "major focal point" for eBay, Cullinane said the company's security spend will be flat this year, amid the current climate of economic uncertainty.
Last October eBay reported third quarter revenues of US$2.12 billion and revealed it was to cut one-tenth of its workforce.
"We are being as conservative as we can. I cannot let everybody have all the training that they want and we have had to curtail some things but we are moving along quite strongly," Cullinane said.
"We are always looking about three to five years ahead, to look for the technology that we need to stay ahead of the bad guys," he said.
Nick Heath of Silicon.com reported from London.
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You got to be kidding
I wouldn't trust eBay looking into my computer anymore than a malware specialist.
EBay is already known as a company that likes to put neat little bugs on computers that most people don't know about. Like Web Beacons which they put on your computer every time you log in. Or every time you open one of their emails a neat little one of these bugs gets implanted in your system.
Posted by anonymous on Wednesday, February 25 2009 03:13 AM