Cybercriminals Create Malware Maze

Filed in archive Malware on March 14, 2008

ITNews is reporting that McAfee has discovered a maze of over 10,000 websites that have been hijacked by cybercriminals with the intent of using them to take over unsuspecting visitor's PCs. The hijacked sites include travel, government and even hobby sites. It's suspected that the pages were probably victimized by a botnet programmed to scan the net for unsecured pages. It plants a piece of Javascript code that redirects to a Chinese site that then downloads malware onto the user's computer. An additional Trojan is also installed to allow other malicious programs to be installed.

Although McAfee claims that many of the sites have since been cleaned up, users should still be wary of even trusted websites and keep their anti-virus and security programs up to date. They should also be sure the latest security patches from Microsoft are installed on their systems.