Marshal warns over blended attacks
It's been coming for a while, but IT security vendor Marshal has confirmed that 45 per cent of Internet users are at risk from a new generation of blended threats.
In its mid-year report, Marshal's appropriately named Trace division says that blended attacks are being used to distribute malware and links to infected Web sites via email as never before.
Marshal says that the 45 per cent of Internet users who don't keep their browsers and PCs bang up to date with security patches are at risk from these threats.
The Trace operation also identified a significant increase in spam used to infect computers with Trojan malware. During the first half of the year, many of the most popular Web sites were found to be hosting malicious software, designed to steal data or add PCs to botnets.
Incredibly, the Trace team claim to have identified 1.5 million Web sites, many of them popular business portals, infected by a botnet attack in May 2008.
You can download a copy of the mid-year security report from the main Marshal Web site.
By Steve Gold, News Editor
