Malicious E-mail Down, Web Attacks on the Rise
Category: Bugs / VirusPosted: April 22, 2008 12:57PM
Author: Nemo
Criminals looking to hijack your PC for use in botnets or infect your machine in an attempt to steal sensitive information are moving away from using e-mail as the attack vector of choice. Instead, they are turning to web attacks according to reports out from both Microsoft and security vendor Sophos. Citing data gathered from its malware removal software Microsoft is seeing a 300% increase in the number of Windows PCs infected with Trojan downloader programs. Based on data gathered from some 450 million PCs that run Microsoft’s malware removal tool each month as part of the Windows update process, the company cleaned malware from 1 in 123 machines. As users and companies get better at blocking executable files sent as e-mail attachments, criminals have become more adept at issuing spam messages enticing users to visit web sites that download malware onto their machines. Sophos is reporting similar statistics stating it is finding new infected web sites at the rate of one every five seconds versus a rate of one very fifteen seconds in 2007. Of the email it examined during the first quarter of 2008, over 90% was spam.
