Game, Television & Celebrities Websites Infect Computer with Malware

Avast!, a computer security firm based in the Czech Republic, discovered a popular culture theme displayed by websites infected with malicious programs. These malicious programs spread spyware and form other threats for home computer users. The security firm has prepared a list called "Most Wanted" of corrupt websites with the help of a community reporting system.

The firm further states that nearly 85% of new computer infections occurred due to Internet surfing. A large proportion of these infections emanate from almost 397000 hacked and malicious web pages discovered during the research in May 2010.

Moreover, the firm reveals that anime, games, television- and movie-related domains and celebrities and celebrity gossip, are major sources of spreading infection on users' computers. Some of the websites appeared on the list are - CoachHandbagOutlet.com, AllCelebsFree.com, Actionfigurecustoms.com, AnimeBreaker.com, Anime-Vids.com and AnimeFuel.com.

Some badware websites come into existence with the sole aim of doing criminal activities. However, other websites become unsuspecting victims of malicious programmers who develop drive-by downloads badware. These badware often redirect computer users to other websites that conduct criminal activities.

Avast! further states that the number of visits to individual infected websites during May 2010 rose 52% and each website received an average of 89 visitors, a substantial increase from the previous level of 59. However, the number of reported infected domains tumbled more than 30% to 396,679.

Ondrej Vlcek, Chief Technology Officer, Avast!, said that this was a bad news for computer users because it indicated towards more infection at high profile legitimate websites that record high number of visits, as reported by Newswire on June 16, 2010.

These websites are targeted because they are commonly visited. This is also applies to pop culture websites, particularly those focusing on celebrities and celebrity gossip, he added.

In addition, the security firm has discovered that EarthLink.net and Ask.com also put users at risk but in different method. Professional hackers use these top domains to redirects users to their own crafted web pages that infect computers.

In order to protect the users from these infected websites, Avast! states that users should mind before actually visiting the website. They should avoid clicking on the search engine results or pop-ups which appear all of a sudden on the computer.

» SPAMfighter News - 6/26/2010