Legitimate Websites Increasingly Used for Malware Attacks

According to Dasient, a security start-up for anti-malware facility, there is a growing trend of legitimate websites becoming subjects of malware attacks. This is because more and more people are setting up their own blogs and websites without implementing an adequate built-in security. Consequently, when anyone views an infected web page, it could lead to the download of malware on his computer without the user getting to know anything about it.

Neil Daswani, Co-founder of Dasient, states that serious compromise of the web represents a real and current danger, as reported by BBC on June 17, 2009. Daswani adds that the growing threat of web compromises is becoming nuisance and impacting massive number of websites, as evident from the estimates of Sophos and Microsoft which reveal that 30,000 web pages are infected daily.

Furthermore, it is not only that those attempting to conserve safety measures or nascent web-masters are being affected with this rising problem, said Dasient. Even the more sophisticated web that is far more complicated in comparison to the traditional web because of its richer functionality, video, third-party widgets, novel sources of material like user-created content and other sources of data such as mash-ups, are also vulnerable to the said kind of attacks.

Hackers use automated approaches that enable them to cause increased harm and chaos. Previously, these criminals used to target a single website as a platform for an attack but presently they try to compromise numerous websites to launch their aggressive assaults.

Thus, StopBadware.org is spreading a message of alert among computer users. This organization comprises of technology industry volunteers and leaders as well as academic institutions that strive to safeguard the Internet and computer-users against bad software.

Maxim Weinstein, Manager of StopBadware.org, acknowledged that there had been radical rise in website attacks, and use of the web to distribute malware was becoming commonplace, as reported by BBC on June 17, 2009.

Thus, Weinstein suggested that the security industry should adopt a more coordinate approach for resolving the problem through data and information sharing as well as co-operation and intra-communication in a pace and quality.

Related article: Legitimate Websites becoming Popular Targets for Hackers

» SPAMfighter News - 6/23/2009