Researchers discover new mass malware infection

Approximately 180,000 infected internet pages are currently downloading drive-by malware onto users' machines

A new malware attack has infected approximately 180,000 internet pages and is downloading malicious software onto users' machines without their consent or knowledge.

The attack was announced recently by security firm Armorize on its blog.

Armorize researcher Wayne Huang said that the problem will affect users with outdated browsing software, highlighting the need to keep software patched up to the latest version.

"In a drive-by download attack, visitors who navigate to the infected websites will be installed with malware on their machines without their knowledge. This is if they have outdated browsing platforms (browser or Adobe PDF or Adobe Flash or Java etc)," he said.

According to Virus Total, a service that checks to see which security products are able to detect certain types of malware, only six anti-virus tools are currently able to detect the attack.

Of the top security firms, only McAfee is able to block the attempted download, said Virus Total.

The attack is very similar to the Lizamoon mass SQL injection attack in April this year.

According to Vincent Delaroche, chairman and chief executive of software analysis and measurement firm CAST, SQL injection attacks can be prevented by proper web coding.

"It's not difficult to code to prevent SQL injections. You just need to check the syntax of the user entry," he said.

He added that the problem lies with senior management, who are not sufficiently interested in coding to motivate staff to adopt best practices.

"Look at large companies in banking, retail or telecoms. Management doesn't ask the coders to code well because, on the whole, management doesn't care," he said.

Judging from the the success of this latest malware epidemic, management has still not learnt that lesson.