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

World Wide Web 'has increased malware risk'

The chance of falling victim to viruses and malware has increased since the invention of the World Wide Web, it has been asserted.

Simon Morris makes the observation in a post on his personal blog, in which he suggests the internet has opened computers up to attack from "the four corners of the world".

He notes that malware is no longer purely aimed at destroying data, but often aims to steal details from the infected computer.

Such a trend represents an increase in risk when compared with the attacks made against early home computers, he claims.

Mr Morris writes: "In the eight-bit days 'safe-sex' computing used to be so easy - the worst most malware could do was trash a floppy."

He adds: "Later, viruses meant malware could infect and trash other disks, but opportunities for infection were rare."

A recent post on Djelite's Weblog warned that web browsers can trigger spyware which was previously dormant on a computer system when a secure website is visited.

PC Tools, Experts in malware and trusted by millions worldwide! Visit www.pctools.com to upgrade your protection.