The quickest way to become infected with malware could be to visit a fake celebrity website and not, as is commonly assumed, one dedicated to porn.This is according to a recent report on malware trends published by McAfee that confirms an October 2005 University Of Washington study that suggested celebrity websites had overtaken porn as the favored means of malware distribution.In fact, the company concurs in Adware and Spyware: Unraveling the Financial Web that porn is now probably only in third place in the malware website league, behind star and screen-saver websites.McAfee’s own take on the issue comes from a study undertaken earlier this by analyzing results from its SiteAdvisor antiphishing browser plug-in. That found many common search terms returned links straight to malware sites, without users having to do much more than hitting the return key on Google. More generally, malware is actually evolving on a trend that dates back to the first widespread appearance of profit-oriented spyware in 2003, the company reckons. It was at that point that forms of malware that had been around for many years started to dominate the security scene.By August of this year, adware alone had expanded to encompass 4,000 variants of a total of 450 base families. Between 2000 and 2002, there were only 45 families. Analyzing the criminal business model reveals that malware, and adware in particular, is now technically sophisticated, involves various techniques in unison, and is highly profitable. Botnets are at the forefront of this, generating in one instance documented in the report, an average of $6,800 per month for a single botnet criminal “herding” a 13,000-PC network.McAfee hints that it is flaws in the Internet business model of today that could now be seeding the e-crime of the future.“The mixing of criminals and legitimate affiliate-marketing activities confuses both merchants and consumers, blurring the boundary between malicious unwanted programs and friendly software” says the report. “The provisioning of such significant financial support will only foster accelerated growth in both diversity and numbers of threats.”-John E. Dunn, Techworld.com (London)Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content BrandPost Smart UPS Connectivity: what it is and why you need it By Veronica Lew Mar 27, 2023 4 mins Remote Access Opinion Huawei’s F5G rollout plan signals new wave of green technology and digital transformation At MWC, Gu Yunbo, President of Huawei’s Enterprise Optical Business Domain, sat down with CIO to discuss a raft of new F5G launches, and what they mean for enterprise computing. By Peter Kirwan Mar 27, 2023 4 mins Digital Transformation Opinion Huawei launches intelligent data storage solutions at MWC to satisfy rising multi-cloud demand Peter Zhou, President of Huawei’s IT Product Line, joined CIO at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to discuss a rising tide of enterprise investment in storage solutions for on-premises data centers and private clouds. By Peter Kirwan Mar 27, 2023 4 mins Data Management BrandPost AI bots for customer experience: trends, insights, and examples How can you implement AI bots in your company, and what will they be able to do for you? Here’s how Avaya expects things to shake out. By Mike Kuch, Sr. Director Solutions Marketing, Avaya Mar 27, 2023 5 mins Artificial Intelligence Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe