33% of “Top” Websites Compromised

http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/one-in-every-3-top-websites-are/

What it means is Forbes.com  has been used for a zero-day malware dissemination. The reason hackers are using top websites is that they are classified as “safe” sites in  sitecheck.sucuri.net for example.

But a major site would be expected to have no malware. this is what is called a watering hole attack. Wikipedia explains in this manner:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watering_Hole

{ a computer attack strategy identified in 2012 by RSA Security, in which the victim is a particular group (organization, industry, or region). In this attack, the attacker guesses or observes which websites the group often uses and infects one or more of them with malware. }

So what happens is the hackers are more sophisticated (as we have been saying over and over) and even large well known websites get hacked and malware gets injected so that most users will not know until it is too late.

Here is a pictorial representation of a specific attack in Metro Boston and government sites.

  image from krebsonsecurity.com

 

You can see that one website gives the hackers other websites to hack or traffic from different major sites. http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/09/espionage-hackers-target-watering-hole-sites/

David Krebs recounts as the RSA reviews the 5 sites as they got hacked between June and July 2012

• http://cartercenter.org
• http://princegeorgescountymd.gov
• http://rocklandtrust.com (Massachusetts Bank)
• http://ndi.org (National Democratic Institute)
• http://www.rferl.org (Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty)

 

We are all on the Internet and we must all improve and test our websites to make sure all visitors do not get attacked unknowingly.