Greater Vigilance Can Eradicate Malware Infection on Websites

Forrester Research, an analyst firm, highlighted in a new study that companies were again at an increasing risk of malware infection on their Websites and of their brands' exploitation in phishing attacks.

Forrester Research Inc., which is a market research and technology company running independently, provides forward-thinking and pragmatic advice to world leaders in technology and business.

Its report titled, 'The Threat Report: 2007 and Beyond', notes that unlike previously when malware was found only on doubtful sites, it now frequently exists on authentic domains as well.

Malware forms a class of malicious software that contains worms, viruses, and trojans that can hijack a user's browser, redirect his search attempts, deliver offensive pop-up ads, intercept the user's Website activity, and generally mess up with things.

Forrester Research's Chenxi Wang warned that there were innumerable instances when trusted Websites were hijacked to host malicious code or malware that redirected the visitor to a malicious site, as reported by BCS on 26th March 2008.

Malware that once confined to marginal sites and domains, today is made to increasingly infect popular, mainstream Websites, often causing extremely damaging results for site operators and users alike.

According to Dr. Wang, it is important that trusted site operators maintain high vigilance to keep their sites secured to avoid a possibility of being compromised, as reported by BCS.

The study report draws another conclusion relating to companies' brands that are being increasingly threatened from sophisticated phishing attacks. Although the new toolbar warning about a phishing site introduced in IE7 would help users up to a point to wipe out phishing completely, users must shift their Web activity to increased vigilance, as reported by iTnews on March 27, 2008.

But, according to a warning by Wang, ISPs would probably not act more proactively to scan Web traffic for malware and phishing sites due to risk from false positives accompanied with the resultant service degradation, as reported by iTnews.

However, Wang said that for sites that generate large contents from visitors it is recommended that users to take help of default scanning tools and verify if any uploaded content contains malware.

Related article: Greater Use of Web 2.0 Create More Malware Threats in 2009

» SPAMfighter News - 3/31/2008