More than ten million people were exposed to drive-by download risks in February.

Research from Barracuda Labs into the world’s top 25,000 websites discovered that one popular site will serve malicious content every day, statistically.  Its report found that the top-ranked domains served malicious content on all but six days in February, while the top-ranked domains that served malicious content were from 18 different countries.

More than half (54 per cent) of the sites were more than five years old, while 43 per cent were between one to five years old.

Paul Judge, chief research officer at Barracuda Networks, said: “Web security has shifted. If you are a popular website or company, the attackers want access to your users. Good sites gone bad is a serious problem. Users must be careful when visiting even long-time trusted sites; also, more than ever legitimate websites must take steps to protect their websites from compromise.”

Published by Robert Rutherford