Websense Security Labsâ„¢ Report: Majority of Malware Being Spread Through Legitimate Websites

Websense Security Labs, the branch of Websense, Inc., that discovers, investigates and reports on advanced Internet threats, has released its "State of Internet Security Q1 - Q2, 2008". This report is based on the data collected during the study between January 1 and June 30, 2008 while scanning more than 40 million websites and about 10 million emails per hour. The aim of the study was to find unwanted content and malicious code. More than 50 million real-time data collecting systems were used in the research.

The results of the study have shown that, as it was predicted, the amount of compromised websites during the first half of 2008 continued to grow and surpass the number of created malicious websites. To be more precise, the amount of infected websites increased by more than 50 percent during the first six months. 75 percent of websites with malicious code are in fact legitimate sites, having "good" reputation.

Moreover, the study has revealed that about 60 percent of the top 100 most visited websites either hosted viruses and other malicious content, or directed potential victims from legitimate site to the malicious one. It is important to note that about 90 percent of these websites can be placed under the category of Social Networking or Search. Being the most popular among simple Internet users, these top visited websites are also the most popular target for cyber criminals.

It should be also noted that attackers are now turning away from the method of creating their own websites. It has been calculated that only 12 percent of the compromised websites were created using Web malware exploitation kits. This indicates the decrease of about 33 percent since December, 2007. The major reasons for such a decrease is that by compromising legitimate websites hackers increase their chances to gain access to personal information and spread their malware more widely. Besides, they try to launch more customized attacks in order to avoid signature detection by security measures.

The study has also provided results on spam emails. About 87 percent of email messages were spam. Although the number of them remained almost the same since the second half of 2007, their content and method have changed. Pornography-related spam is no longer the most popular sphere. Shopping (20 percent), Cosmetics (19 percent), and Medical (11 percent) messages are now the top three spam topics.

Resources:

"State of Internet Security Q1 - Q2, 2008": Report

Malware Being Spread Through Legitimate Websites

Short Review of the Report