Report shows that attacks are becoming much more advanced these days

May 29, 2014 08:11 GMT  ·  By

No one is safe online these days, as a new report reveals that nearly half the adult Americans browsing the web got hacked this year due to what the experts are calling more sophisticated attacks and vulnerable software.

A report conducted by Ponemon Institute for CNNMoney revealed that 110 million Americans were hacked in the first months of 2014, while the number of hacked accounts skyrockets to 432 million.

And what's more, security experts are warning that these stats could be even higher because some large companies on the web that recently fell victims to hackers, including eBay, do not share details regarding the number of hacked accounts.

As for the reasons behind the shocking boost of hacked accounts, it's easy to see why this is happening. Hacking attacks are getting more sophisticated and are now involving advanced techniques that could easily get targeted users on a malicious website.

At the same time, security gurus point out that hackers are often trying to work in groups to develop malware specifically aimed at a specific organization, thus launching more or less personalized attacks with a higher success rate.

The amount of data that moves online, including personal details, shopping, banking, and social information, is also becoming a much more attractive target for hackers, who are now trying to break into accounts in order to access these credentials.

Vulnerable software is also playing a decisive role in users' online security, with many still running old applications affected by security flaws which could be easily exploited in order to access locally-stored data.

Windows XP is clearly the best example in this case, with third-party stats showing that 26 percent of the world's desktop computers are still powered by this old version, even though Microsoft stopped releasing updates and security patches for it on April 8.

Many do not seem to care, however, and although Windows XP could become vulnerable overnight if someone finds an unpatched vulnerability in the operating system, millions of users refuse to upgrade to a different platform due to a number of reasons, including the high costs of the transition and the less-familiar changes that Microsoft implemented in modern Windows.

Yet, the inevitable is already happening and security experts recently found a new zero-day flaw in Internet Explorer 8, also confirmed on Windows XP, which would allow attackers to get the same rights as the logged-in user and run malicious code on a vulnerable system via malware hosted on compromised websites.

Microsoft has already acknowledged the flaw and says that it is working on a fix, reminding at the same time that Windows XP users will no longer receive the patch when it goes live.