Websense Security Labs Report (State of Internet Security Q1,Q2 2009)

The first half of 2009 saw a number of big exploits and an escalation of attacks using the dynamic elements of popular Web 2.0 sites to infect users’ computers and perpetrate fraud. Additionally, the Websense Security Labs found a massive increase in the number of malicious sites which increased 233 percent over the six month period.

Attackers continued to use blended threats (spam emails with embedded URLs) to lure victims to spam and malicious Web sites with 85.6 percent of all unwanted emails in circulation during this period containing links to spam sites and/or malicious Web sites. The rise of blended threats illustrates that Web security intelligence is a critical component of any email and data security strategy.

Today’s threats are leading to the Web, whether as the vector of the attack or simply the route in which stolen, confidential data is transmitted. Further underscoring the growth of the Web as the primary threat vector, during the first half of 2009 Websense Security Labs discovered:

-  233% growth in the number of malicious sites in the last six months and a 671% growth during the last year.
-  77% of Web sites with malicious code are legitimate sites that have been compromised.
-  95% of comments to blogs, chat rooms and message boards are spam or malicious.
-  57% of data-stealing attacks are conducted over the Web.
-  85.6% of all unwanted emails in circulation contained links to spam sites and/or malicious Web sites.

These discoveries, along with details on other exploits and analysis of Web, email and data security trends during the first half of 2009 are explored in the Websense Security Labs “State of Internet Security” report.

The full report is available here: www.websense.com/downloadthreatreport

An archived Webcast presentation about the report can be found here: http://www.websense.com/content/ProductResources.aspx

Thanks to Mazoo ( mmors [] websense [] com ) for posting this video on SecurityTube!

 

Vivek Ramachandran is a security evangelist and has been working in computer security related fields for the past 7 years. In 2007, Vivek spoke at world renowned conferences Defcon (WEP Cloaking Exposed) and Toorcon (The Caffe Latte Attack). The discovery of the Caffe Latte Attack was covered by CBS5 news, BBC online, Network World etc news agencies.In 2006, Vivek was announced as one of winners of the Microsoft Security Shootout contest held in India among 65,000 participants. He has also been a recipient of a Team Achievement at Cisco Systems for his work on 802.1x and Port Security modules on the Catalyst 6500 switches. Currently he spends all of his time maintaining Security- Freak.Net , SecurityTube.Net and is the co-founder of Axonize. Vivek, is a Bachelor in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.You can contact him at vivek[at]securitytube.net