From this report:
"60 percent of top Google search terms delivered you to malicious sites in the first 100 results."
"7 percent of all malware was referred by Google, followed by Yahoo at 2 percent and Bing at 1 percent."
I have seen this first hand at our organization, where my users pick up malware regularly from using Google search, while those who have switched to other search engines rarely do so. Add to this the fact that Google is absolutely lousy for tech search and I have to ask:
Why does any knowledgeable person still use Google?
McAfee and Cisco have released their detailed cybersecurity reports for the third quarter and there’s good news and bad news. Malware surged in the quarter, but spam eased off a bit.
Here’s a look at cybersecurity by the numbers for the third quarter. McAfee said in its more consumer focused report:
- 60,000 new pieces of malware were identified a day, quadruple the 2007 rate. In the third quarter, McAfee identified 14 million unique pieces of malware, up 1 million from a year ago.
- The Zeus botnet led to small businesses losing $70 million to Ukranian cyberthugs.
- The most popular botnet was Cutwail, which used denial of service attacks against 300 Web sites.
- In the third quarter, 60 percent of top Google search terms delivered you to malicious sites in the first 100 results.
Cisco’s more enterprise-focused report had the following gems:
- 10 percent of malware was encountered via search engines.
- 7 percent of all malware was referred by Google, followed by Yahoo at 2 percent and Bing at 1 percent.
- Exploits targeting Sun Java was 7 percent of all encounters in the third quarter.
- Adobe Reader and Acrobat exploits declined from 3 percent of all malware in July to 1 percent in September.
- 38 percent of those hit by Stuxnet were in the U.K. with 25 percent in Hong Kong.
- Like McAfee, Cisco reported the volume of spam dropped—except for items sent from Russia and the Ukraine.
- Here are the verticals most at risk for Malware.
