Sophos: Google's Blogger hosts 2% of world's malware

by Tim Conneally

Security research and analysis firm Sophos has released its cybercrime report for the first half of 2008 and found Blogger, a property of Google, to be the prime distributer of malware today.

Where infected e-mail attachments used to be the vehicle of choice for delivering malware, Sophos notes that most attacks today come from infected Web sites. Last year, one in 332 e-mails contained a malicious attachment. Today, that number has dropped to one in every 2,500.

However, malicious e-mail is still a germane concern, as spam frequently contains links to compromised sites. Many of these sites are completely legitimate, as well.

In fact, Sophos notes that 90 percent of the sites that spread trojans and spyware are otherwise reputable and trustworthy. They are turned into malware delivery platforms through scripting and SQL database attacks. But far the easiest for attackers to use as a platform, Sophos says, is Blogger.

Google's self-publishing tool dates back to the late 90's, and allows free and anonymous creation of a site hosting malicious code. What's more, the commenting system can also be spammed with links to infected sites.

Because of its relative ease of "infection", Sophos says that nearly 2 percent of all malware is hosted by Google, amounting to roughly 400 new instances a day.

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