A massive attack on the World Wide Web has been underway affecting thousands of popular websites. Simply visiting an affected page can cause users to become infected with a Trojan horse that can allow hackers to obtain passwords and other critical information from remote systems.SearchSecurity.com has reported on the issue: “A widespread Internet attack has hit thousands of Web sites in the past week, planting malware on vulnerable machines that may be designed to steal credit card and other information then marketed to organized identity theft markets, according to government officials and information security experts.” Read the full SearchSecurity.com story.

Builder.com has also identified the source of the attack in an e-mail security brief: “An attack launched this week by crackers was nipped in the bud on Friday, when Internet engineers managed to shut down a Russian server that had been the source of malicious code for the attack. However, compromised Web sites are still attempting to infect Web surfers’ PCs by referring them to the server in Russia, but that computer can no longer be reached.” Visit Builder.com for the most recent information.

Bytware urges all system administrators and managers to ensure that scanning engines and DAT files are up-to-date.

For more information about iSeries virus protection, visit the main StandGuard Anti-Virus page

Tags: internet attack, trojan, viruses