Sophos releases its Mid-Year Security Threat Report

IT security and data
protection firm, Sophos, has announced the midyear threat report of
high-profile hacking attacks against governments and corporations,
that seems to have dominated the security landscape in 2011. The
result is that other security issues which could pose a greater
threat to businesses, governments and consumers such as fake
anti-virus, search engine poisoning and social networking scams have
received far less attention, therefore slipped beneath the radar.
With a new unique malware threat seen almost every half a second, it
is vital to understand how these new threats work and how to build
the proper defenses. IT security and data protection firm Sophos
highlights those findings and more in the Sophos Security Threat
Report Mid-Year 2011.

Malware attacks remain the
biggest Internet threat to all computer users, as fake anti-virus and
search engine optimization poisoning have become commonplace. Since
the beginning of 2011, Sophos has identified an average of 150,000
malware samples every day. That breaks down to a unique malware file
being created every half a second, an alarming 60% increase over
2010. Additionally, 19,000 malicious website addresses (URLs) have
been identified daily, with 80% of those URLs being legitimate sites
that have been hacked or compromised.

"2011 has seen a
continued massive uptick in the volume of malware in which the web is
the dominant vector for both targeted and mass-scale attacks,"
said Mark Harris, VP, SophosLabs. He added, "The virulence of
attacks such as fake AV requires a prompt move by IT organizations
and consumers to employ more layered web protection and defenses to
reduce the attack surface of the devices they use."

The report focuses on new
types of threats and offers advice on how organizations can properly
defend themselves against the new wave of malware and scams. The
Sophos Mid-Year 2011 Security Threat Report has identified several
issues of concern. They include:

• Search engine
  poisoning, also known as Black Hat SEO, is on the rise, threatening
  businesses of all sizes. Cybercriminals manipulate search results from
  Google, Bing and Yahoo to lure web surfers to malicious pages. These
  criminals hijack popular search terms related to breaking news as well
  as mundane search terms that relate to home-repair services or personal
  health. Hackers redirect users to malicious sites that place viruses,
  worms, trojans or fake anti-virus software on computers.

• Social media threats
  have sharply escalated while mass scale email-focused attacks are
  diminishing.