Studies show that malware has increased by 278 percent and it will only get worse before it gets better.
Malware has risen this year by an alarming 278 percent in the first half of 2008 due to in part by a large number of compromised websites. This astounding figure was reported by ScanSafe, a web security service. Can you image malware getting any worse than it already is? Well hold on to your butts because that is just what will be happening according recent reports and studies.
We managed to find that The ScanSafe Global Threat report is composed of a study of more than 60 billion scanned web requests in addition to 600 million web threats that were blocked from January through June 2008 on part of corporate customers worldwide. In this same report is where it was found that web-based malware has increased 278 percent during this period.
Who is affected by this substantial rise in malware?
Several big company websites were compromised this year such as Wal-Mart, Ralph Lauren Home, Business Week and others. It almost makes you feel as if you are not safe surfing any website now days. It is an inevitable circumstance that you run across a website that was or is currently hacked or has malware especially if you surf several websites on a daily basis. Basicly everyone who uses the internet may run accorss some form of malware of website that has been attacked at some point and time.
Where is all of this malware coming from?
Hackers and those who seem to have a lot of time on their hands have developed many ways of attacking websites. Many legitimate websites were attacked through automated attack tools which we discovered to have started running rampart in late 2007. Because many of the attacked sites are trusted or well known corporate sites, the attackers are able to spread malware to numerous users in a short time span. This gives the attackers plenty of time to spread the "love" before the vulnerability is discovered or the site is taken down.
Other means of spreading malware was discovered to come from SQL injection attacks or scripts that run in the background. Usually the SQL or Structured Query Language code is added to a web form input box to gain access to resources. This allows the data on the site to be changed and is the most common form of website compromise. ScanSafe found that backdoor Trojans and password stealers have increased as well. DNS exploits, which is a bit older than previously mentioned attacks, continue to rise in numbers as well.
We all have to protect our interest and stay up-to-date on the latest threats just about every day that we choose to use The Internet.
Have you recently been infected by malware from a trusted website. Have you visited a popular website this year and later found out that it was compromised by a hacker? Does this affect or change how much you use the internet?