Cybercrooks are Ditching Sex Sites and Hacking Legit IT Sites to Plant Malware

It has been a long and virtually predictable past for cybercrooks to take to sex or porn sites to plant malware and watch it grow without any roadblocks. Today, we are seeing a shift of the favored type of websites to IT-type (Information Technology) sites, which cybercrooks are now digging up to plant malware without any foreseen stunt in growth.

It is not surprising to find that a large majority, as much as 85% reported in Websense's latest threat report, of malicious web links last year were found on legitimate hosts that were compromised. That is up from 82% recorded in 2011 clearly demonstrating how cybercriminals are finding value in utilizing legitimate entities as a launching platform for malware on the Internet.

In the perspective of the web today, many of the porn sites and those who have questionable business practices in the view of web filtering will naturally have limited access. Basically, such sites are not as easily accessible as the high-traffic and trusted IT sites now targeted by cybercrooks. Search engines are cracking down on access to porn and gambling sites while they continue to allow unadulterated access to trusted IT sites. Why not flood IT sites with malware, it is the perfect recipe for disaster isn't it?

Most of the targeted websites for malware links were for business and economy, something extremely relevant to our current economic status in the United States, which is among the top countries for hosting malware. Followed by the U.S., the Russian Federation and Germany are all listed in Websense's threat report released last week as the top countries for hosting malware.

As cybercrooks are looking to take their efforts of compromising sites to IT-type sites, they are also employing command and control (CnC) servers as a means of controlling compromised systems. After infecting a computer through compromised sites, cybercrooks are attempting attacks against victimized systems. According to Websense, the top countries hosting CnC servers are located in the U.S., China and Russia. Together these three countries account for about half of all detected malicious activity of this kind.

As we look into the future and our recent predictions of malware, it is evident that cybercrooks are not standing still in any aspect as they endeavor on the forefront of legitimate IT-type sites instead of potentially filtered or blocked porn and sex-based sites. Who knows, next time you surf a sex site you may make it out without an infection - on your computer.