14 DAY TRIAL // The number the illegal websites available out there on the internet is huge but many security companies are working hardly to block all of them and to make the internet more secure. No matter if we're talking about a phishing attempt, hacker activity or an internet attack, your computer must be protected against all kinds of threats with a powerful solution especially designed for the security of your system. Although these illegal activities can be very dangerous, there are a lot of other malicious elements that can harm your computer: viruses, Trojans, malware and other types of infections. Recently, multiple news service announced that a Sweden bank was affected by a phishing attack that was based on a Trojan meant to steal all the clients' financial information. At that time, the bank confirmed the attack and also mentioned that 250 client were affected by the attack while other 121 customers were still under investigation.
So, if a bank isn't 100 percent secure, it's obvious that no one on the internet can browse webpages safely. Security company Sophos released a security report to present important statistics that sustained US is the most affected territory, hosting the biggest number of malicious and infected websites. "The Sophos Security Threat Report 2007 examines in detail the top ten malware threats of the last year, and also confirms that malware authors are continuing to turn their backs on large-scale attacks in favor of more focused strikes against computer users," the company says about the report.
The security company mentioned that Microsoft Windows was the most affected operating system with a huge number of attacks made through several Trojan horses while the number of worms is continuously decreasing. Sophos also included a chart with the countries that are hosting the biggest amount of websites containing malware: United States, China and Russian Federation.
"The US remains a hot spot for online criminal activity, and despite authorities' continued efforts to clamp down on cyber crime, too many US-hosted websites still have lax security measures in place," said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant for Sophos. "Given the effectiveness of web-based attacks, web hosting companies in the US and elsewhere need to step up their policing of published content, and ensure that malicious code is quickly removed, before innocent users get hit," it is mentioned in the report.
The security company Sophos presented the evolution of the e-mail spam, an illegal activity that also distributed a lot of infected files meant to make the user's computer even more vulnerable in front of the hacker attacks. "Sophos found that the most prolific email threats during 2006 were the Mytob, Netsky, Sober and Zafi families of worms, which together accounted for more than 75% of all infected email. However, Sophos predicts that 2007 is likely to see a significant shift away from the use of email security threats, with cyber criminals instead looking to exploit the continued global growth in web use, as well as user-defined web content," the report said.