Did you read the interesting story in Bloomberg.com based on a report (yet to be released) by Barracuda Networks Inc? As per the story, “Google Inc has almost cut in half the malicious software affecting users of its search engine, driving hackers to competitors including Microsoft Inc's Bing, Yahoo! Inc and Twitter Inc”.
It further reported that hackers targeted Google 38 per cent of the time as of Dec 31, and accounted for 69 per cent of the attacks in a sample conducted around June, the report says. The number of attacks increased even though Google improved its security.
Meanwhile, Google's competitors recorded an increase in malware- laced search results: Cyber criminals placed 30 per cent of their bad software on Yahoo! search results in December, up from 18 per cent in June. Bing accounted for 24 per cent in December, up from 12 per cent in June. And the targeting of Twitter rose to 8 per cent from 1 per cent, the report says.
Until a few years ago, worms, viruses, Trojans and other such malware could largely be avoided if users stayed away from porn sites and other dubious web neighborhoods. But now the cyber criminals are targeting the search engines.
