9,500 Web Pages Hosted Malware Each Day in May

May 2007 saw 9,500 infected web pages each day, says Sophos' recent report on malware threats.

Sophos global network of monitoring stations compiled the figures, which show that there is a continuous threat from infected web pages. This threat is most harmful for government websites and also other legitimate sites. In the month of May Sophos uncovered an average of 9,500 new infected web pages per day. In comparison to April 2007, this figure was 1,000 more each day. On the whole May 2007 had a total of 304,000 web pages infected with malicious code.

Where legitimate government websites is being found to contain malware, it implies that any organization that is not vigilant can be similarly hit, said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos in a statement. Sophos published it on June 1, 2007.

Iframe, known to insert malicious code onto regular web pages remains in the first position on the list. It covered nearly 66% of total web-based malware in May this year. The three new virus entrants Redlof, Roor and Soraci have infected HTM, HTML and HTT files and others.

In May, Sober attacks was most widespread and via e-mail displacing Netsky from its highest position and covering nearly 33% of total threats. Of the total infected e-mails that Sophos identified, 70% carried Sober and its variants.

Theriault advised web surfers to be careful for they are the prime targets of these sites. Surfers should be on guard against spam that trick users to open spurious web links even if they look authentic. They should also maintain up-to-date anti-virus and security patches. In addition they could ask their administrator or ISP to block infected websites.

China is the leading country in hosting malware accounting for 50% of all infected web pages that Sophos identified. Iframe has been responsible for widely injecting malware on unprotected web pages in the country. Next to China are U.S. with 27.4% of malicious web pages, Germany with 5.1% and Russia with 3.5%. In the fifth position is Thailand, never to have entered the list before, and accounting for 1.1% of infected web pages.

Related article: “Loopholes did not cause online banking thefts”: ICBC

» SPAMfighter News - 6/13/2007