RSSStopBadware Calls Malware Trends 'Worrisome'
By Ed Oswald | Published October 11, 2007, 3:08 PM
Malware on mainstream Web sites are becoming an increasingly larger problem as hackers are finding ways to infiltrate them, and place code that infects whomever visits the site.
StopBadware.org co-director Jonathan Zittrain called the trends worrisome, especially considering many webmasters are doing little -- if anything -- to stop it.
"Webmasters are not fully aware of the risks, nor are many of them convinced that it is their responsibility to contain them," Zittrain added. "Even if they are eager to clean up, they do not have easy places to turn to for help."
In its report released this month, the group said that a significant number of the new sites reported as containing badware were actually 'benign' sites that had been hacked without the knowledge of the website owner.
Two common ways to launch these attacks in the first half of 2007 were by loading a malicious IFRAME into a benign page, or through the use of JavaScript exploits, StopBadware said.
This is made possible through the rise in what the group calls "drive-by downloads," where the installation of the software occurs just by visiting an infected site.
Additional attacks seemed to be coming via social networking through the rise in spam profiles. StopBadware said many of these come with links to malicious sites, or attempt to place malicious code within the pages.
Currently StopBadware's list of malicious websites contains some 237,800 URLs.
Seems like most decent antivirus vendors are now detecting malware the same as virus scanning. If your isn't time to change. Seems the biggest threat these days is from this kind of infection.
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I haven't been infected by spyware or virus' with XP, but then I take precautions and do run anti-spyware/virus apps.
The only thing I'm concerned about is someone who was on XP who did the same but started to become "slack" with their precautions with Vista because they trust into its security features too much.
It's not a matter of if someone is going to find a way to infect Vista, it's a matter of when.
There's just too much money involved for the criminals to not infect Vista.
I really believe that these criminals/hackers could easily be put out of business by having those who use the internet etc. be a little more wiser, use the security features in the OS, use a firewall, anti-virus/spyware apps, users who don't are the ones who are infected. Just to think if they smartened up what's the claim something like 40% of all internet bandwidth is spam, so that would clear up now that would be sweat even if I would never notice with a speed increase :)
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My machine(s) have been screwed in the past somply by visiting a site. That was with XP however, Vista simply doesn't let this happen.
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You forget to add "Yet."
And you wouldn't have had a problem in XP with Firefox. :p
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Make that firefox with the noscript plugin.
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I use Maxthon and so do my parents. We never get any problems in regards to spyware etc. What does that mean?
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