51 Percent Of Malicious Web Sites Are Hacked

The number of legitimate Web sites that have been hacked and seeded with code that tries to infect visitors PCs with malware now exceeds the number of sites specifically created by cyber criminals, according to a report released today.

San Diego based security firm Websense says that roughly 51 percent of all the malicious sites it found in the second half of 2007 were legitimate sites that were compromised by attackers. Malicious, compromised Web sites are especially dangerous because they usually already have a steady stream of trusting visitors. Many of these visitors may not have the latest patches for their Web browser of choice.