Most malware now from legitimate sites
Most websites serving up malware are legitimate according to a senior security researcher. Dan Hubbard, Websense’s vice president of security research, said that for the first time, legitimate sites seized by hackers outnumber malicious ones.
According to data compiled by Websense, 51 percent of the sites it classified as malicious in the second half of 2007 had been compromised and then seeded with attack code that infected unpatched machines visiting the URLs. The remaining 49 percent were “intentionally built for malicious intent,” the Websense report said.
Hacking legitimate sites to make them sling malware gives attackers instant advantages, said Hubbard. “It’s a great vector because they don’t need to drive users to the sites in many cases; they also get free hosting, of course, and [it's] hard to trace ownership,” Hubbard said. “Additionally, if someone is allowing access based on reputation, then they may go undetected.”
Source: Tech World
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