The Dasient Q4 Malware Update: Significant Rise in Malvertising Attacks, Social Networking Sites Easy Distribution Platforms for Malware

Q4 2010 was a quarter in which we saw continued growth of web malware and malvertising attacks targeting legitimate sites. In this report, we focus on (1) quantitative measurements around web malware and malvertising, (2) analysis surrounding the most significant attacker domains for the quarter, and (3) results from some experiments we conducted on the potential impact that web malware could have on social media networks.

NASDAQ Exchange website infected with malware

According to various sources, a website operated by Nasdaq was compromised and infected with web based malware. Reports of the attack surfaced last week. The target of this attack are the roughly 10,000 executives that use the Nasdaq information portal Directors Desk. It appears that attackers were able to inject drive-by-download malware onto the website. Although sources familiar with the matter claim that the exchange’s trading platforms were not affected, the risks of this attack are nonetheless very high. Visitors to the website would have been exposed to malware which could at a later time log their keystrokes and steal passwords to sensitive trading accounts or other information.