eScan, anti-virus and content security solution provider has released a report based on malware URLs. The report is a representation of the growing malware trends in the forthcoming months. According to the statistics, the total number of recorded malware incidents surged in 2011 to 2.5 billion. The report highlights that most of the viruses are not newly created but are being re-written or re-coded to a great extent.
“A number of low-cost high-impact infection techniques rely on social engineering attacks. Till date it has been a tough task for IT administrators to stop such attacks. Awareness is a key and knowing which documents to download and open will help prevent your machine from being infected. In addition, patching of OS and software is critical,” said Govind Rammurthy, MD and CEO, eScan .
According to the report documents are one of the most common ways through which malware is spread across the Internet. Web pages rank high in terms of hosting malware. The malware exploit kits serve as an engine for drive-by-downloads. Peer-to-Peer networks have become the key source of malware infection. Internet Explorer is by far the most vulnerable, as with programs that work within browsers such as Adobe Reader and Flash Player. The prevalence of SEO poisoning is also on the rise with 45% of malware writers using search engine as a medium to spread viruses.