Symantec have compiled a list of the dirtiest websites of the year, virus and trojan-wise anyway and, no, they’re not sharing the addresses. There are some interesting things that have come out of this however and when the UK’s GetSafeOnline.org chaps got in touch with me about this, I thought you might want to know what you’re facing whenever you go online.
The sites Symantec consider the dirtiest are the ones containing the most threats. You may or may not be surprised to hear that adult sites made up 37% of the offensive websites. Most people wouldn’t find this surprising but I do.
Why is this? Think of all the common security features we all use on the internet on a day to day basis. SSL, secure transactions, password protected content, DRM… it all started with the porn industry. This is where all the innovation for current web security came from to begin with.
The rest of the dirty sites, and we can assume that warez were high up on the list too, included a much more varied gamut of subject matter. Symantec say in their report that…
the remainder of the list … including sites dedicated to laser engraving, gaming cheats, news sites and glove retailers. Security risks are the most common threat represented on the Dirtiest list, followed by Viruses and browser exploits. Simply visiting one of these sites, without downloading or clicking on anything in particular, could put you at risk of exposing your computer to infection, and worse, put your identity, personal and financial information into the hands of cybercriminals.
In the run up to Christmas, and with more and more people shopping online, cyber-criminals are looking for ever more ways to distribute viruses, keyloggers and trojans. They can also affect completely legitimate websites through hacking the servers. Last year I discovered a virus embedded into custom code that had been uploaded to the National Black Police Officers Association. I duly alerted them to the problem though they took an agonising three weeks to fix it.
The scariest fact though from the research is that 40 of the 100 dirtiest websites have more than 20,000 threats each including all types of malware, and that infected sites carrying 18,000+ threats are commonplace.
That said there’s no reason why you shouldn’t happily do your Christmas shopping online, just look for the padlock (and click it to check its validity), make sure your protection is up to date and use secure passwords.
