Research reveals that the majority of"malicious" websitesare now
legitimate sites that have been compromised by
attackers.
The Websense Security Labs report says the number of legitimate
websites compromised by attackers has surpassed those purposefully
created by attackers.
Attackers know that compromising sites with generally good
reputations can increase the success rate of attacks, said
Websense.
For instance, last year, Websense discovered an attack launched
within the United Nations' HIV/AIDS Asia Pacific portal.
In this case, when visitors opened the United Nations website,
unprotected users inadvertently downloaded a Trojan horse that
infected their computers with malicious code.
Victims became unknowing participants in a larger bot network
that attackers could use for future
malicious attacks, posing a risk to both personal computer
users and businesses.
Last September, Websense says it was first to find the Web
2.0-based "Phast Phlux Phishing" attack on the
social networking site MySpace.
After MySpace announced increased measures to protect users from
online threats, many users were compromised by this scam that stole
confidential user login credentials for malicious purposes.