Web Sense Claims 600% Hike in Websites Providing Malware

Over the past few years, there has been a drastic increase of 600% in the number of malware-providing websites as per the security firm Web Sense's '2013 Threat Report' launched recently. From the perspective of Web experts, there have been claims that the websites have become significantly more malicious in 2012. The North American malicious websites comprising of EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) displayed a total increase of 531%).

While commenting on the same, Charles Renert, Vice President of Web sense said that predominantly, the websites were staged on genuine websites for challenging traditional approaches to security and trust, as per a statement released by techday.com on February 15, 2013.

However, due to this timed, targeted nature of these kinds of threats, an innovative kind of sophisticated attacker that focuses on compromising increasingly have yielded increased targets. Only practical and actual-time security methods that have found the whole lifecycle to be a threat are empowered to survive the assault and prevent theft of the data.

Cybercriminals use the web not only as an attack vector but also as a support element that launches attack through e-mail, mobile handset or social networks.

As estimated, popular social media websites have been hampered for malicious schemes. For e.g., 32% of the abbreviated links posted on social network hid malicious content.

Cybercriminals who take advantage of this truth are acquainted with the skill of such websites. Also, they increase the confusion covering the new characteristics and services. China, the United States of America and Russia are the topmost countries that are hosting the command and control servers.

However, in accordance to the report, the United States of American, Russia and Germany were the top three countries that are hosting the malware. In the meantime, the Bahamas scoring a second rank have made its debut into the list of top five countries that are hosting phishing websites.

Also, one in five e-mails was found to be authentic and e-mail spam has increased to 76%. Throughout the world, spam volumes have reached to more than a quarter of a million e-mail per hour.

Researchers suppose that with the increase in malicious page, Trojan downloaders will become more efficient in polluting users. According to the claims of Web sense, half of the downloaded malware that were noticed will download and run additional malicious application within 60 seconds of installation.

Related article: Web Flaws Among the Top Three Common Vulnerabilities

» SPAMfighter News - 2/26/2013