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Submitted by: Bill Hickey
NCVA List Master
NRT-0237 Nearly 30,000 Malicious Web Sites Apear Each Day:
Sophos researchers have observed that the number of malicious web sites has skyrocketed over the past few months, going from 5,000 new ones a day in April to nearly 30,000 a day now. "In June, we saw it climb to 9,500 a day and then this huge jump up to 29,000," said Carole Theriault, a senior security consultant with Sophos. Theriault said there is a two-pronged reason for the remarkable increase. One reason is that hackers are increasingly turning away from email as their preferred method of spreading malware and putting their focus on the malicious web site. In some cases, they are creating their own malicious web sites, but in most cases they are hacking into legitimate sites and embedding malware into them. According to Sophos, researchers are finding 29,700 new infected web pages every day, and 80% of them are legitimate sites that have been compromised.
The IFrame malware was a majr web site infector in June. IFrame, which injects malicious HTML files onto web pages, actually topped Sophos' chart for June's Top 10 Web Threats, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the world's infected web pages. Earlier this month, hackers used the IFrame malware on multiple Italian web sites. Sophos reported that more than 10,000 web pages were infected in the attack, most of which were on compromised legitimate sites hosted in Italy. Victim web sites included Italian city councils, employment services, and tourism sites. Most of the affecte pages appear to be hosted by one of the largest ISPs in Italy, Sophos noted.
However, Theriault also noted that another reason for the dramatic increase is that researchers simply are getting better at finding the subversions.
(www.informationweek.com 02JUL07)
Last Modified: Sunday, 22-Jul-2007 09:26:15 EDT