Newest ways to plant malware on your computer
The traditional method of using email to infect computers with malware is giving way to the practice of hacking legitimate Web sites so that viewing them will surreptitiously download Trojans and the like to your computer. An article at ZDNet gives a review of how sites are being used for drive-by-downloads:
But compromised Web pages are now rapidly emerging as the replacement vehicle of choice for mass malware distribution. Multiple layers of exploit code targeting Web systems have found a blind spot in safeguards such as traditional Anti-Virus and Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS). Malware code using everything from simple UU encoding techniques to elaborate self-decoding Java scripts is currently wreaking havoc on the Internet.
Another article notes:
Most people probably think that as long as they don’t visit Web sites of ill-repute, they’ll be quite safe, but that’s not quite true. Yes, it’s undoubtedly dangerous to walk on the virtual wild side, but we’ve noticed a disturbing trend towards hacking innocent websites, and turning them into unwitting lures for the exploit servers.
There is no perfect defense against the ever-changing tactics of the Internet criminals but restricting scripting and other methods discussed in previous posts can greatly reduce your chances of being infected.
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