Most Malware Served Up by Legit Websites That Have Been Compromised

Malware is the vile scourge of the internet. It invades your privacy, tracking where you’ve been on the internet to sell to marketing companies interested in your browsing habits. It invades your computer, sending pop-ups for products you don’t want, or it tricks users into buying some bogus program to fix nonexistent problems with their PCs. It steals resources from your computer, taking up CPU time, RAM and drive space. Being a malware programmer must rank up there with pimp-meister for jobs that you don’t tell friends and family that you do.

It used to be that you would pickup malware from ending up on a bogus site someplace, but it turns out that it is coming from almost everywhere now, according to a Websense report. About 75 percent of it comes from legitimate sites that have been compromised. That is an almost 50 percent rise over Q3 & Q4 of 2007. Of the top 100 websites on the internet 60 percent either hosted malicious content or contained a redirect to lure victims to malicious sites.

Always have your protection when surfing the internet boys and girls and not just FireFox like in the poster image below. An up to date Internet Security Suite is a must have.

You can visit the complete Websense report here for all the latest info on the filth lurking on the internet.

What do you do to protect your computer from Malware? Wrapping it in latex doesn't count.