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: http://www.websense.com/downloadthreatreport
