They are out to get you
RichD
Essex, UK
I recently decided to read one of the newsletters that our corperate IT support send out (I usually just delete them) and I found this article providing some scary statistics about the web. They are sourced from Websense
"The latest report from Websense, covering the last quarter of 2008*, shows that simply browsing the web is becoming more hazardous. You may think you are looking at a legitimate, innocuous web page that you have browsed many times before, but it may contain hidden code designed to confuse or evade antivirus tools, with the objective of stealing your personal details. Criminals around the world use sophisticated techniques to steal identities, financial information (and hence to collect cash from your accounts) or for industrial espionage.
Web Security
77 percent of web sites with malicious code are legitimate sites that have been compromised
The number of malicious web sites identified by Websense Security Labs from January 2008 through to January 2009 has increased by 46 percent
70 percent of the top 100 sites either hosted malicious content or contained a masked redirect to lure unsuspecting victims from legitimate sites to malicious sites. This represents a 16 percent increase over the last six-month period.
Messaging Security
84.5 percent of email messages were spam. This represents a 3 percent decrease over the last six months
90.4 percent of all unwanted emails in circulation during this period contained links to spam sites or malicious web sites. This represents almost a 6 percent increase in emails containing malicious links to compromised sites
Shopping remained the leading spam topic (22 percent), followed closely by cosmetics (15 percent) and medical (14.5 percent). This remained consistent over the last six months. Pornography-related spam increased sharply by 94 percent, but still represented only 9 percent of all email spam
6 percent of spam messages were phishing attacks, representing a 33 percent decrease over the last six months. This represents a change in tactics as spammers concentrated on data-stealing Trojan horses and DNS poisoning tactics to lure victims to malicious sites.
Data Security
39 percent of malicious web attacks included data-stealing code
57 percent of data-stealing attacks are conducted over the web. This represents a 24 percent increase over the six-month period.
* Websense Security Labs; State of Internet Security, Q3 – Q4, 2008"
"The latest report from Websense, covering the last quarter of 2008*, shows that simply browsing the web is becoming more hazardous. You may think you are looking at a legitimate, innocuous web page that you have browsed many times before, but it may contain hidden code designed to confuse or evade antivirus tools, with the objective of stealing your personal details. Criminals around the world use sophisticated techniques to steal identities, financial information (and hence to collect cash from your accounts) or for industrial espionage.
Web Security
77 percent of web sites with malicious code are legitimate sites that have been compromised
The number of malicious web sites identified by Websense Security Labs from January 2008 through to January 2009 has increased by 46 percent
70 percent of the top 100 sites either hosted malicious content or contained a masked redirect to lure unsuspecting victims from legitimate sites to malicious sites. This represents a 16 percent increase over the last six-month period.
Messaging Security
84.5 percent of email messages were spam. This represents a 3 percent decrease over the last six months
90.4 percent of all unwanted emails in circulation during this period contained links to spam sites or malicious web sites. This represents almost a 6 percent increase in emails containing malicious links to compromised sites
Shopping remained the leading spam topic (22 percent), followed closely by cosmetics (15 percent) and medical (14.5 percent). This remained consistent over the last six months. Pornography-related spam increased sharply by 94 percent, but still represented only 9 percent of all email spam
6 percent of spam messages were phishing attacks, representing a 33 percent decrease over the last six months. This represents a change in tactics as spammers concentrated on data-stealing Trojan horses and DNS poisoning tactics to lure victims to malicious sites.
Data Security
39 percent of malicious web attacks included data-stealing code
57 percent of data-stealing attacks are conducted over the web. This represents a 24 percent increase over the six-month period.
* Websense Security Labs; State of Internet Security, Q3 – Q4, 2008"
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