Most dangerous websites' list shows porn sites surprisingly safe

ANI

From Washington :  Pornographic websites have ceased to be the 'most dangerous' places on web for picking up viruses.

The Internet Security Threat report for 2011, released by security Software Company Symantec(SYMC) ranks pornographic sites at 9th as the riskiest to visit.

One of the most fascinating part of the report is in the review of malicious code trends, which lists the 10 most dangerous categories of Websites.

These categories of sites don't reflect the total number of infected sites; rather, they represent the kind of sites that tend to be the most infected as per URL.

The list of sites in order of danger is:

Blogs and Web communications

Hosting and personal hosted sites

Business and economy

Education and reference

Technology

Entertainment and music

Automotive

Health and medicine

Porn

According to Symantec, 20 percent of all blog and Web communication sites are infected with malicious code, 15 percent of hosting sites are infected, and 10 percent of business and economy sites.

Surprisingly, only 2 percent of pornographic sites are infected.

Conventional wisdom would flip that list upside-down.

Symantec's list is a reminder that Macs are no longer immune to security worries.

"The first known Mac-based bot network emerged in 2009 and 2011 saw a number of new threats emerge for Mac OS X, including trojans like MacDefender, a fake anti-virus program," the CBS News quoted Symantec 

as saying.

"Mac users are exposed to sites that push trojans by means of SEO poisoning and social networking. In May 2011, Symantec found a malware kit for Mac (Weyland-Yutani BOT) -- the first of its kind to attack the Mac OS X platform.

"In addition, many attack tools have become cross-platform, exploiting Java exploits whether they are on Macs or Windows PCs," the company added. (ANI)