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Many Legitimate Web Sites are Compromised

April 2009

A WebSense report reveals that 70% of the most popular web sites host some kind of malicious content and that 77% of web sites hosting malicious content are apparently legitimate.

The key points of the report are as follows:

• 70 percent of the top 100 most popular Web sites either hosted malicious content or contained a masked redirect to lure unsuspecting victims from legitimate sites to malicious sites. This represents a 16 percent increase over the last six-month period, according to new research released today from Websense Security Labs. The top 100 most popular Web sites, many of which are social networking, Web 2.0 and search sites, represent the majority of all Web page views and are the most popular target for attackers.
  
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  In the second half of 2008 more than 77 percent of the Web sites Websense classified as malicious were actually sites with seemingly "good" reputations that had been compromised by attackers. This percentage is up slightly from 75 percent in the first half of 2008.
  
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  The number of malicious Web sites identified by Websense Security Labs from January first 2008 through January first 2009 has increased by 46 percent.
  
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  Websense Security Labs found that 39 percent of malicious Web attacks included data-stealing code, demonstrating that attackers are after essential information and data.
  
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  The Web continues to be the most popular vector for data-stealing attacks. In the second half of 2008 the Websense Security Labs found that 57 percent of data-stealing attacks are conducted over the Web, representing a 24 percent increase over the six-month period.
  
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  The convergence of blended Web and email threats continues to increase. Websense Security Labs reports that 90.4 percent of all unwanted emails in circulation in the second half of 2008 contained links to spam sites and/or malicious Web sites. This represents a nearly 6 percent increase in emails containing a malicious links to compromised sites.
  

WebSense Report (PDF)

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