63% of Website Owners Don’t Know How They Were Hacked

ZDNet: A survey conducted by StopBadware and Commtouch found that website owners often remain unaware after hack attacks. In fact, 90 percent of hacked website owners said they didn’t notice when their sites were being used to send spam, host phishing pages or distribute malware. In addition, 63 percent of those surveyed didn’t know how the hack occurred.

At the time of the survey, 26 percent of hacked website owners hadn’t figured out how to remedy the situation.

“Cybercriminals can significantly improve their open and click-through rates by distributing badware via legitimate domains, explained Commtouch’s Amir Lev. “Many site owners are either unaware of the compromise or struggle to remove the infection, which directly contributes to the persistence of, and increase in active badware URLs.”