One in three websites are unsafe or hacked

How safe is that website you are visiting? According to Menlo Security, one out of every three websites are either hacked or vulnerable to hacking.

For a couple of days in 2014, Forbes was hacked with a zero-day Adobe Flash vulnerability, which was linked to a Chinese cyber espionage group.

"We saw the Forbes.com hack, and that there were quite a few other sites being hacked, delivering malware, targeting innocent users," said Menlo Security's CTO Kowsik Guruswamy. "We were curious how that malware got there in the first place."

The company decided to test one million websites.

What they found was that 34 percent were classified as "risky."

22 percent were running on vulnerable infrastructure.

8 percent are running vulnerable Web server software.

2 percent of the sites run vulnerable content management systems.

4 percent of the top websites are actively hosting malware.

Another 3 percent were serving up spam or running botnets.

"Forbes.com is a well-known site," he said. "People think, 'let's not worry about it.' But that's the wrong conception."

Source: CSOonline