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Submitted by: Bill Hickey
NCVA List Master

NRT-0260 Poisoned Web Sites Soar Six-Fold:

The number of infected web pages has soared nearly six-fold since the first of the year, according to security company Sophos PLC. Detailed in a just-released threat report, the spike shows just how widespread web attacks have become. In June 2007, it detected an average of almost 30,000 newly-infected pages each day; earlier in the year, the tally was as low as only 5,000 new pages daily. According to Sophos, about 80% of all web-based malware is on innocent, albeit compromised, sites. A recent example: The June attacks launched from a collection of more than 10,000 legitimate web sites, the bulk of the hosted on Italian servers. The servers were compromised using an unknown vulnerability, and then loaded with Mpack, a multiple-exploit toolkit hackers deploy to hijack PCs visitig those sites. Just over half - 51% - of the infected sites are on servers powered by Apache, the open-source web server software, Sophos reported, while Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) web server accounted for 34% of compromised or malicious systems. Both numbers are in line with web server market share, according to the UK-based Internet measuring company Netcraft, Ltd.

(Computerworld 25Jul07)

Last Modified: Tuesday, 31-Jul-2007 23:08:36 EDT