Attack Sites Spring Up Constantly

Many computer users are aware of the existence of malicious software and scamming emails on the Internet, though some may not realize the extent of these threats.

Every week, about 57,000 attack sites, appear on the Internet disguised as legitimate web pages, Panda Security recently announced, according to an AFP report. Often, these bogus pages are designed to appear as though they're part of a popular online bank, auction or shopping destination. Web users typically arrive at these sites through search engine links.

"Although search engines are making an effort to mitigate the situation by changing indexing algorithms, they have so far been unable to offset the avalanche of new websites being created by hackers every day," PandaLabs technical director Luis Corrons told the news service.

Among the companies that are most often impersonated by these attack sites are Visa, Amazon, PayPal, HSBC and even the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the report said. About two-thirds of all these sites are related to banks.

For more information on this threat, please read our CIO's blog post, "The Cyber World We Live In."