Search engine listings littered with dangerous malware

Date:
Mon, 28 Mar 2022 14:44:28 +0000

Description:
Millions of sites play host to malware, whether intentionally or otherwise.

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There are currently an estimated 4.1 million websites infected with malware worldwide.

This is the conclusion of a new report from certificate lifecycle management (CLM) provider Sectigo, based on an analysis of more than 14 million websites conducted by its website protection and monitoring arm, SiteLock.

Whats worse, almost all of these infected websites (93%) are not blacklisted and therefore appear in public search engine listings. The most prevalent malware variants are Filehacker, which is found in more than a third of infected websites, and Backdoor (31%). TechRadar needs you!

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Click here to start the survey in a new window << Bot traffic

To infect many millions of websites is an impressive feat. So, how do threat actors do it?

Sectigo believes the majority automate their attacks; bots in 2021 accounted for 5.5 times more traffic than humans, amounting to more than 2,300 weekly average bot visits per site. At the same time, the volume of human traffic decreased.

While not all bot traffic is malicious, the part that is causes plenty of headache all around. Read more

Bot traffic fueling rise of fake news and cybercrime

Bot traffic reached a new high in 2020

Bad bots make up a huge amount of all internet traffic

Malicious bots can programmatically visit websites and identify vulnerabilities in code to execute their attacks, such as stealing data or inserting malware, said Jason Soroko, CTO of PKI at Sectigo.

The public internet is a very dangerous place and is increasingly getting worse. Dont commit the fallacy of the underdog, SMB websites have enormous value to bad actors because they have customer data and can be used for phishing attacks. Its not just about fraud, either. If websites handle payments, theyre obvious targets, too. The content management system
platforms SMBs rely on may not protect against these threats. In fact, they are inherently difficult to secure.

In total, endpoints are attacked 172 times per day, meaning they receive
eight attacks every minute. Nearly half (48%) of SMB website owners believe they are too small to target. At the same time, more than half of them have already been breached.

Given the broad range of threats, businesses require a comprehensive security solution , Sectigo concluded. Here's our rundown of the best ransomware protection right now



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/many-more-websites-are-infected-with-malware-th an-you-might-think/


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