Industry News Home More stories like this... RSS Feed

Staying on legit websites online no longer counts, report says

Computer users have been warned that avoiding dodgy cites no longer guarantees them safe distance from online threats posed by cyber crooks.

According to information from data-protection firm Websense, six out of 10 of the 100 most popular websites have been infected with malware at some point over the last six months.

The information, which is from the the latest State of the Internet Report highlights a 50 per cent increase over the same period.

"Attackers are forgoing creating their own malicious sites and targeting legitimate sites that have a built-in base of visitors," said Dan Hubbard, chief technology officer at Websense.

"There is an element of trust in the web 2.0 world that the sites we frequent every day are safe, but attackers are taking advantage of the 'good reputations' of sites to launch attacks."

The research also showed that 87 per cent of emails are spam and Hubbard urged the adoption of internet security protection capable of real-time analysis of content.

PC Tools internet security, safeguards your PC against cyber threats with proactive defence. Visit www.pctools.com to upgrade your protection