Security threat: One web page infected every five seconds

NEWS

Web threats have risen significantly in the first quarter of 2008, with one web page being infected every five seconds, according to a report from security vendor Sophos.

Released Wednesday, Sophos said in its Security Threat Report that an average of more than 15,000 web pages were compromised daily between January and March.

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In contrast, the daily average for the entire 2007 was about 6,000, or one infected web page every 14 seconds.

About 79 per cent of compromised web pages tracked this year belong to legitimate websites, Sophos reported. The company noted that the sites of Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and even security vendors, have fallen prey to malware attacks. In addition, there has been a rise in spam-related web pages - a daily average of 23,300 such pages were tracked during the first three months of 2008. This is equivalent to one spam web page being discovered every three seconds.

Threats circulated via email, on the other hand, appeared to have cooled off during the first quarter of this year. According to Sophos, only one in 2,500 email messages contained malware - 40 per cent fewer than 2007, where one in 909 email messages were infected.

The US remains the top contributor of spam, followed by Russia, Turkey, China including Hong Kong and Brazil.