Jul
19
- Chris Braund
- 19/Jul/2010 12:28
Thousands of hijacked websites belonging to small businesses in the UK are putting surfers at risk, according to security experts. Surfers have been warned that many legitimate websites in the UK pose a risk to visitors as they have been hijacked by cybercriminals.
Security firm, Avast has said it detected almost 400,000 hijacked and malicious web pages last month, many of which belonged to small businesses. Some of the most dangerous during May included Airsoftsniper.co.uk, Callingtoncommunitycollege.co.uk, Estoys.co.uk and Girliethingswales.co.uk, according to Avast. Not just the small sites though, even the big guys are falliable. In late 2009 Twitter was hacked by a group called the ‘Iranian Cyber Army’. Not quite what they people were expecting to see when they went for a tweet.
Back in the UK however, Avast's chief technology officer, Ondrej Vlcek commented: "This is bad news for the general public as it means there are more infections at high profile, legitimate sites with a high visit rate" he continued "... small businesses are easy targets as they often don't employ in-house IT staff and tend to use basic hosting services with limited threat prevention technology. While users should be cautious, most online hazards can simply not be seen.".
Not to worry at VSI however, having achieved PCI DSS compliance, and with the latest threat prevention technology our websites are in safe hands.