Dasient spots 640,000 malware-infected Web sites

Dasient estimates 640,000 Web sites infected -- a total of 5.8 million pages

Security start-up Dasient says more than 640,000 Web sites -- a total of 5.8 million pages -- were infected with malware between July and September of this year.

11 security companies to watch

Dasient, which specializes in combating malware on Web sites, identified more than 52,000 specific Web-based malware infections, making a total of 72,000 unique infections it has catalogued since the company launched earlier this year.

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Security start-up Dasient says more than 640,000 Web sites -- a total of 5.8 million pages -- were infected with malware between July and September of this year.

11 security companies to watch

Dasient, which specializes in combating malware on Web sites, identified more than 52,000 specific Web-based malware infections, making a total of 72,000 unique infections it has catalogued since the company launched earlier this year.

"There are about 7,000 sites infected every day," says Dasient co-founder Neil Daswani. Dasient has also observed that the reinfection rate on Web sites that have been cleaned up is 39.6%. Attackers use automated scripts or malicious advertisements, among other means, to continually seek to load malware onto sites to perpetrate criminal schemes.

In addition to research on Web site infections, Dasient says it is making available "malware strings" composed of some attack code so IT managers can examine it with the goal of determining whether their sites might be infected.

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