Malicious Links and Malware Rising Threat across Australia - Study

Trend Micro, a security firm, recently released a roundup report in third quarter said that there has been a steep hike in malicious links across Australia in 2014.

According to the new report, Australians clicked on more than 45.5 million malicious links during third quarter of 2014 which is more than 39 million during Q2 and almost 27 million malicious links during Q1. This has positioned Australia fifth globally for countries with largest number of visits to tainted websites following US, Japan, France and Italy.

Trend Micro said that the rise in malicious attacks during third quarter was due to Shellshock event which endangered over half a billion services and devices internationally. Simultaneously, it added that there has been surge in volume and classiness of Internet and mobile app flaws.

The report also revealed that Australia stood fifth in the world for countries with most point-of-sale malware infections where many attacked large retailers.

In the meantime, number of infected end points to command and control servers in Australia were so high that Australia stood third in the world after US and Japan during third quarter.

Arnnet.com.au published a report on 3rd December, 2014 stating that Jon Oliver, A/NZ Senior Software Architect Director of Trend Micro has warned that such figures confirm that security landscape continuous to be more dangerous to Internauts and the influx of new devices continuous to confuse attempts to limit exposure of Internauts to security vulnerabilities.

Securityweek.com published news on 2nd December, 2014 quoting a statement of Raimund Genes, CTO of Trend Micro, as "Our conclusions confirm that we are fighting rapidly moving cyber crooks and evolving vulnerabilities concurrently. With this flexibility, it's time to accept the fact that compromise will continue and we should not be surprised to find such compromises. Preparation is the key aspect and as an industry we must correctly educate consumers and firms about high risks as attacks grow in sophistication and volume. We understand that cybercriminals are finding vulnerabilities and potential loopholes in all devices and this podium will probably help us to tackle these challenges by employing the technology in a positive manner."

» SPAMfighter News - 12/10/2014