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It seems after a brief scan that about 80% of sites contain common flaws that allows them to be compromised in some way, most often to create phishing sites, steal data and hijack info about clients.<\/p>\n
An amazing 30% contain a serious vulnerability.<\/p>\n
Eight out of ten Web sites contain common flaws that can allow attackers to steal customer data, create phishing exploits, or craft a variety of other attacks, a security company reported today.<\/p>\n
WhiteHat Security regularly scans hundreds of “very popular, very high-traffic sites” for its online business customers, says Jeremiah Grossman, the company’s founder. “More than likely, you have shopped there, or bank there,” he says. Thirty percent of scanned sites contain an urgent vulnerability, such as one that allows direct access to a company database with customer information, he says.<\/p>\n
Two out of three scanned sites have one or more cross-site scripting (XSS) flaws, which take advantage of problems with sites’ programming and are increasingly used in phishing attacks. A recent eBay scam used a now-fixed XSS hole on the auction site to direct anyone who clicked on a phony car auction to a phishing site.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I guess this should be a stern lesson for anyone shopping online or using online facilities from any companies\/banks or financial institutions.<\/p>\n
About a third of scanned sites are at risk for some sort of information leakage, which often means the providing of programming data about the site that can facilitate an attack. And about one out of four sites allows content spoofing, another potential phishing risk, according to WhiteHat’s vulnerability report.<\/p>\n
A type of database vulnerability that allows SQL injection attacks — “one of the nastier issues out there” — is becoming less common, Grossman says. Fewer than one out of five sites contain this type of vulnerability, but a successful incident can give a sophisticated attacker access to everything in a company’s database, he says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The irony is those geeky sites which hold the least important information about people are usually the most secure, where as the big sites built by important companies often have the most vulnerabilities and are leaking the most important data.<\/p>\n
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