If hijacked sites and hosting companies that fail to police malware distribution sources represent two of the most serious threats to Internet security, there may be hope for improvement, according to researchers working with Harvard Law School's StopBadware.org.

After publishing a list of rogue Web site hosting companies and launching a campaign to label every malicious site they can find on the Internet, an effort that has filtered out over 600,000 nefarious applications thus far, the StopBadware team says that people are responding.

The project currently counts less than 250,000 Web sites that it classifies as distributors of programs that qualify as badware -- any application that either tries to hide itself or any of its intentions, based on the parameters of the effort. StopBadware also announced that Internet mainstays Paypal and VeriSign have joined its influential cast of sponsors, which includes Google.

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Malware, Badware, StopBadware.org, Researcher