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Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Cyber security by the numbers: Malware surges, spam declines in third quarter

By | November 17, 2010, 8:18am PST

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.

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Topics

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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RE: Cyber security by the numbers: Malware surges, spam declines in third quarter
beatrs 18th Oct
Cyber security is very important. Who would want to get their personal informations hacked and their credit cards Canada used by cyber criminals. I see why malwares are encountered through search engines esp. through Google because it is what most people use. Why would cyber criminals placed malwares in a site where few people would encounter it, that's not the way a business plan sample works because you go where people are. For these attackers, the more people who encounters malwares, the better. So it's better to be careful in visiting sites because attackers are just lurking around like spy camera video.
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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?
@itpro_z
Mainly because Yahoo is a smelly web parasite and Bing can't find ****
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Isn't that the point?
itpro_z Updated - 17th Nov 2010
@kenift, if you want ****, use Google. If you want to actually find what you are searching for without ****, use anything BUT Google.
@kenift
HA! @itpro_z I love it!
@itpro_z
Your blaming google for the malware problem?? HAHAHAHHA
How about putting the blame where it really belongs.The IT people responsible for keeping the web sites/servers patched/coded properly so there web site isn't used for spreading malware.
Since when is it a search company's responsibility to scan web sites for problems????
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Try reading the article
itpro_z 17th Nov 2010
@Stan57, yes, I blame Google when 60% of their links are to malware infested sites. I blame Google when, as an earlier report testified, you search for "Haiti earthquake" and the first 10 links were to infested sites. Yes, I do know that there are legitimate sites that are infected, but Google, for whatever reason, serves up an inordinately high percentage of infested sites.

Friends don't let friends "Google".
@itpro_z WOW I bet Donnie... is at home crying over the hurt feelings from this one.
Here have what you need!


It's very good!
0 Votes
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Use some smarts
Greenknight_z 18th Nov 2010
@itpro_z - Don't click on the top search result on Google, and your chances of hitting a bad site are less; if it's a current news item search, click only on links to known legit news sites.

I also use Web of Trust to flag bad links - and I use Firefox with NoScript, so I not much chance of picking up malware even if I visit a bad site.
@itpro_z

Read the article, man. It doesn't say sixty percent of Google searches point to malicious sites, it says sixty percent of TOP GOOGLE SEARCH TERMS (TERMS) yield results that point to at least ONE malicious site IN THE FIRST 100 RESULTS! (i.e., as little as ONE PERCENT, not sixty)

That suggests more that people in your organization spend far too much time searching on Lindsay Lohan, Justin Beber and Bristol Palin than that there's something wrong with Google. I'd be surprised if the search engines you favor do any better. It's more likely that the users sophisticated enough to switch search engines are less likely to waste company time on frivolous searches so they're less likely to get hit.

The reason Google referred more people to malware than Yahoo or Bing is that more people USE Google than use Yahoo and Bing combined. If most people drive a Chevrolet, then most accidents are going to involve Chevrolets; but it's not Chevrolet's fault.

I can't comment on your last point about tech searches. I do pretty well with Google, and so must most other people who keep it the #1 search engine by a wide margin.

You don't happen to work for Microsoft, do you?
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Maybe people are wiseing up?
colinmeister 17th Nov 2010
Finally people must be realising that emails offering huge rewards or lottery wins are bogus? Maybe people are also realising that cheap pharmaceuticals are not really pharmaceuticals? If nobody responds to spam, spammers will find something else to spend their time on.
Spam is down? Tell that to my e-mail please! Today I woke up to 50 spams/scams in my junk mail and every day is about the same, with at least 30 in a day.
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No reason a malicious site should be allowed to stay up. Even if it's inadvertently malicious due to sysadmin incompetence, we should be able to take it down. Period. It's called The Morgan Doctrine, a restatement of the Monroe Doctrine but for cyber crime.
0 Votes
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The situation is terrible. People going around creating havoc for others, without any point at all other than to be mean. They don'e know who the person is or what they need their computer to do. What about the disabled person or medical service organization, among other such instances, that can't use their systems? I had at least two infections since October and had never been troubled for decades. Awful people without any soul creating havoc for others.
Well done! Thank you very much for professional templates and community edition
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Cyber security is very important. Who would want to get their personal informations hacked and their credit cards Canada used by cyber criminals. I see why malwares are encountered through search engines esp. through Google because it is what most people use. Why would cyber criminals placed malwares in a site where few people would encounter it, that's not the way a business plan sample works because you go where people are. For these attackers, the more people who encounters malwares, the better. So it's better to be careful in visiting sites because attackers are just lurking around like spy camera video.

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