Over 1M Websites Delivered Malicious Content During Q2-2010

Researchers from Dasient the security company have published a fresh research paper according to which, the total number of malware contaminated websites rose sharply to 1.3m during Q2-2010 and unlike ever before, the number is more than 1m.

Specifically the paper outlines that the second quarter of 2010 has had a considerable hike in contaminated websites - nearly two times of the preceding quarter. Web attackers have remained extremely occupied and have been continuously devising fresh techniques for hacking, it states.

Moreover, the paper further discloses that the attackers still popularly prefer .com sites. Evidently, the .cn and .com top rated domains pertaining to online sites in China were responsible for the maximum number of top rated domains that attackers abused during Q2-2010. The attackers considerably increased the abuse of .info sites as well during Q2-2010.

State the researchers that Web attackers apparently are abusing more .com sites overall so that the name of their domains appear genuine to the maximum possible extent. Besides, although the cyber-criminals are apparently abusing increasing number of .com domains, they often abuse certain .cn domains in comparison to their corresponding .com domains.

Further, according to the paper, the total number of online sites, which are dependent on 3rd-party items, is rising too. The statistics reveal that 91% of online sites utilize 3rd-party software and/or obsolete applications, 75% utilize intermediate JavaScript widgets and 42% -3rd-party items related to ads.

States Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Neil Daswani at Daswani, structural security flaws represent a prominent reason for attack. According to him, when websites, which use intermediate resources, are compromised, malware distribution can be truly hastened. Threat Post published this in news on September 15, 2010.

Notably according to the researchers, Web-based assaults have been an area where malware activity has been growing extremely fast during recent years since increasing number of software moved towards the Web as also surfers intensely browsed social-networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Consequently, organizations now require spending resources for Web-monitoring software as well as attending more closely to patches and updates developed to fix 3rd-party tools and widgets that they've installed.

Related article: Opera 9.1 Browser Introduces phishing Alert

» SPAMfighter News - 9/28/2010