Popular Websites Deliver More Malware Than Porn Sites: Websense

According to Websense the security company, which recently released a research paper, malware abounds the World Wide Web so much that surfers encounter malicious content far more on widely browsed websites rather than on gaming or adult sites.

During its research, the security company found 3 common channels to malicious software. Besides the most widely visited Internet sites, there were malicious web-links and corrupted search results. Also, of the 1,000 most prevalent malware-laden websites that with simple clicks produced malicious content, 72% were popular media and news sites; 71% were popular message forums and boards; and over 50% were sites for social networking, the study reveals.

In the meantime, the research further assessed the total number of websites that had malevolent links versus those that had malware.

Stated Websense that the above websites did not serve malware themselves -however, when anyone accessed such a trustworthy website, he was at risk of merely clicking once for a contaminated site. Darkreading.com reported this on September 28, 2010. A number of the most widely visited websites would take the victim onto malware via numerous affiliate websites to which they were connected, the security company said.

For instance, malevolent links related to popular news sites such as CNN, were more in number compared to those related to conventionally dangerous sites like porn or gambling sites.

Furthermore, the research discovered that corrupted returns on search engines producing malevolent links obtained from trendy keywords rose to 22% during the recent few months of 2010 from 14% during the former months of the same year. Additionally, Web-surfers were more risked with running into malware when searching for a hot topic like "World Cup 2010" rather than when searching for sexual content that most frequently delivered malicious content. Websense outlined that when searching for the term "World Cup 2012," 25% of the returns appeared malicious.

Also, according to the company, approximately 40% of the whole lot of status posts on Facebook contained URLs of which 10% supported spam or malware, while 10% of all updates daily that were innumerable in number represented the massive e-mail junk moving across Facebook.

Related article: Popular Firefox Inching Towards Malware’s Target

» SPAMfighter News - 10/6/2010