2011-10-01
Abstract
Study finds that 99.8% of malware infections caused by commercial exploit kits could be avoided if just six software packages are kept up to date.
Copyright © 2011 Virus Bulletin
A study has underlined the importance of keeping on top of software patching after finding that 99.8% of malware infections caused by commercial exploit kits could be avoided if just six specific software packages are kept up to date with the latest patches.
For almost three months CSIS collected real-time data from a range of exploit kits in order to determine how Windows machines are infected and which browsers, versions of Windows and third-party software are at risk.
More than 50 different exploit kits were monitored on 44 unique servers/IP addresses – covering more than half a million user exposures, out of which 31.3% were infected with the malware.
Of the users who were exposed to drive-by attacks two thirds were using Internet Explorer, while 21% used Firefox, 8% used Chrome, 3% used Safari and 2% were using Opera. The machines exposed to malicious code were mostly running Windows XP and Windows Vista (41% and 38%, respectively).
The study found that the applications whose flaws are most frequently abused by malware to infect Windows machines are: Java JRE (37%), Adobe Reader/Acrobat (32%), Adobe Flash (16%) and Microsoft Internet Explorer (10%); other commonly abused software packages were Windows HCP (3%) and Apple Quicktime (2%). Thus, simply patching these applications can provide a significant boost to users’ security.
