Covert Crawler Descends on Web, Could Aid Spammers and Hackers

[mandy]

Websites get looked at by two different kinds of visitors: the human ones who peer around, look at the graphics, think about the links and click slowly; and the spiders, those automated scanners that come in from search engines like Google, or, more ominously, from malicious attackers, competing businesses and spammers looking for e-mail addresses.

Fortunately, it has always been pretty easy to tell the difference between the two in server logs, and block unwanted or anti-social crawlers. But research presented at the Shmoo Con hacker conference here Friday may change that.

Ball says the research will make it easier for attackers to automatically and discreetly spot flaws on websites they previously had to root out by hand...

full article: http://www.wirednews.com/news/technology..._tophead_2