Website Hacks Continue Unabated
A new report has confirmed that website hacking attempts around the globe continue to grow. In particular, the use of SQL injection attacks is increasing significantly, with hundreds of thousands of websites infected in recent months.
The reasons behind such attacks range from fraud to pure malice. For example, it was reported that hackers had exploited a security hole in the publishing software used to support forums on the Epilepsy Foundation website. The attackers posted hundreds of flashing images, designed to cause seizures in site visitors with photosensitive epilepsy.
The study, conducted by Akamai, a provider of Internet content and application delivery, was undertaken by monitoring a global network of 30,000 servers and measured website hacking attempts, denial-of-service attacks and DNS hijackings.
The results also highlighted the growing threat posed by Far Eastern countries as far as web attacks are concerned. Japan accounted for just over 30% of the attack traffic monitored, whilst Hong Kong was the most risky top level domain (TLD), with 19.2% of all sites tested rated as red (avoid) or yellow (caution).
Meanwhile, the most attacked port was Port 445, attracting just over 28% of attack traffic. This port is used for directory services on Microsoft operating systems. The largest number of attempted connections to this port came from Japan and the United States. For attack traffic coming from China, the highest percentage of attempted connections was directed at Port 1434, which is used for Microsoft SQL Monitor.