Malicious websites proliferated by 225 per cent in H2 '09: Websense
04 Feb 2010
The web continues to be the most popular mode for data-stealing attacks, with 58 per cent of data-stealing attacks being conducted over the internet in the second half of 2009.
Internet security provider Websense said that its security labs reported over 1 in 10 'top search' results were actually malware, which made targeted attacks on unsupecting users searching the web for information. It found that 35 per cent of malicious web attacks included data-stealing code, demonstrating that attackers are after essential information and data.
Acording to new research, by Websense's State of Internet, H2 2009 report, the second half of 2009 the number of malicious websites have grown by 225 per cent, compared to the second half of 2008.
"The second half of 2009 saw malware authors focus their efforts to ensure they drove victims straight to them," says the report.
In contrast to the first half of the year where mass injection attacks like Gumblar, Beladen and Nine Ball promoted a sharp rise in the number of malicious web sites, Websense Security Labs observed a slight 3.3 per cent decline in the growth of the number of web sites that had been compromised.
"Instead, attackers replaced their traditional scattergun approach with focused efforts on Web 2.0 properties with higher traffic and multiple pages," the report said.
