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Sports Websites The Largest Medium For Distributing Malware

Avast the security firm based in the Czech Republic has discovered that several sports websites are contaminated with programs, which serve spyware as well as cause other attacks against home PCs.

States the company that cyber-criminals are taking advantage of an exciting sports summer for duping Internet users into opening golf, soccer and paintball websites that carry malware capable of hijacking privacy or doing things even worse. Wallet Pop published this on July 28, 2010.

Internet crooks attempt at cheating people into opening websites, which are apparently or actually genuine, however, contain malware without visitors knowing about it. Consequently, such visitors become risked with downloading malware onto their computers.

Evidently, such malware lets the criminal to hijack the infected PC so that it can be used for various malicious purposes. Others can pull down software like keystroke logging programs which seize passwords as well as transmit them onto the computers of intermediate parties.

Notably, Avast has listed the websites, reportedly found infected, in its "Most Wanted" list published on a monthly basis. These websites include elitepaintballguns.com, cybergolf.com, footballfevr.com, u-soccer.com, joinfutbol.com, sport-pros.com, mosportsmen.com, sportxsport.com, sportsroids.com, and topsportzone.com.

But, all the contaminated websites related to sports don't disseminate malware. Only a few of them do. The mosportsmen.com and cybergolf.com sites, for instance, though appear genuine are still contaminated to the ignorance of their site admins as well as can disseminate malicious programs to visitors.

Chief Technology Officer Ondrej Vlcek at Avast Software stated that since the infection could be seen on the affected websites but normally escaped detection vis-à-vis its source, it was hard for flagging websites with absolute certainty. Dark Reading published this on July 27, 2010.

Vlcek further stated that some websites were treacherous as they provided only that much content that search engines could notice, but really aimed at contaminating unwary end-users.

Meanwhile, as per the security researchers, cyber-criminals infecting Internet sites isn't something new. In 2009, Martuz and Gumblar the drive-by downloads contaminated innumerable websites globally that in turn infected Web-surfers. The two downloads were spewed from botnets that actually harmed as well as utilized numerous PCs for illicit operations.

Related article: Spreadsheets Cracking Through Due to Inadequate Security Scrutiny

» SPAMfighter News - 8/9/2010

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