Malvertising increases by 240 per cent as networks detected

Malvertising networks were answerable for a 240 per cent increase within the variety of malicious sites detected in 2011.

According to the 2012 security report from Blue Coat Systems, ‘malnets' are different from botnets as they're in the internet and end-uers are going to trusted websites and finally end up infected.

Blue Coat said that malnets are built, managed and maintained by cyber criminals for the aim of launching numerous attacks against unsuspecting users over extended periods of time, with the final word result to steal personal information or transforming end-user systems into botnets.

Speaking to SC Magazine, David Albohair, senior product marketing manager at Blue Coat said that 74 per cent of infections were from legitimate websites and plenty of infections were from social networking sites.

He also claimed that malnets are getting so effective at launching attacks through engines like google/portals that one in 142 searches results in malicious links.

Last year, the London Stock Exchange was hit by a malvertising scare when a 3rd party advertising provider named Unanimis was hit and the London Stock Exchange's website was one of several sites to be affected.

The report claimed that there are five main malnets, the biggest being ‘Shnakule' which specialises in distributing drive-by download attacks, rogue anti-virus and pretend Firefox and Adobe updates. The Glomyn malnet mainly distributes spam while Naargo and Cinbric are interested in sending adult content.

Albohair said: “The aim of those is to download software to the top-user to create a type of botnet, so now individuals are targeted by a cyber criminal.”