Study shows applications, not just operating systems, are also vulnerable to hacking
Despite what those famous Apple commercials would have you believe, Microsoft Windows is not the problem when it comes to viruses, nor is the Mac a solution. This according to the SANS Institute, an IT security education and research group, which published a study of computer and network vulnerabilities that included 15,000 organizations in its scope. According to Switched, "the study is one of the first to offer hard data about the the number and severity of digital threats across the entire computing landscape."
Most attacks on today's computers focus on vulnerabilities in Web browsers, Flash, Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Office. Alternatively, they go right to the source and weasel their way onto legitimate sites.
The vast majority of security holes in Microsoft's operating systems are fixed within days of their discovery. On the other hand, the report states, "vulnerabilities found in applications receive less attention and get patched on a much slower timeline." Often vulnerabilities remain unpatched for at least 30 days, and some applications, like Flash, have zero-day exploits unplugged since as early as 2007.
According to the report, the most "popular" applications that are being targeted typically change over time since "the rationale for targeting a particular application often depends on factors like prevalence or the inability to effectively patch." Due to the current trend of converting trusted web sites into malicious servers, browsers and client-side applications that can be invoked by browsers seem to be consistently targeted.
Interestingly, Apple's Quicktime account for the majority of attacks that are launched at Apple software. A chart published in the study shows that attacks on the United States dwarf every other country by comparison. In fact these attacks number more than every other country combined. But not only is the US the largest target, it also is the greatest originator of attacks as well, though not by as large a margin:
Here we see the United States as by far the largest origin, which is a pattern that has continued for some time. In many cases we believe these to be compromised machines that are then being used for further nefarious purposes. The next four offenders on the HTTP Server-Side attacking countries list are Thailand, Taiwan, China, and the Republic of Korea.
"While the media may consistently report attacker targets as being credit cards and social security numbers, that is more due to the popular understanding of the marketability of this data," the report concludes. "They are not the only valuable data types that can be compromised. Since SQL Injection attacks offer such easy access to data, it should be assumed that any valuable data stored in a database accessed by a web server is being targeted."
So while it's important to update your virus software, simply guarding your operating system is not enough. Many major search engines will sometimes warn you before you click on a link whether malicious code exists on a website, and some virus software will be able to tell you whether a site is malicious or not. Always be careful what you download, especially if it's a link provided in an email.