Increase in 'One-Day Wonder' websites helps disguise malware

Increase in 'One-Day Wonder' websites help disguise malware

Hugh Thompson on ways users can try to protect their information

Using the Internet might have just become a bit more risky.

A new study by California-based security firm Blue Coat found that over a three-month period about 470 million hostnames or devices connected to a computer network were considered to be ‘One-Day Wonder’ websites.

Blue Coat Chief Security Strategist and Senior Vice President Hugh Thompson told Foxnews.com that this high volume poses a threat to web users.

“There is a bunch of expansion and contraction that happens right at the edges of [the web] - what we’ve found is ‘One-Day Wonders’ that go up, serve their purpose then are taken down,” he said. “Hackers hide their activities in these websites that never existed before.”

The study found 22 percent of the top 50 parent domains that most frequently used 'One-Day Wonders' were malicious. The domains used short-lived sites to facilitate attacks and manage botnets.

“Hackers hide their activities in these websites that never existed before ..."
— Hugh Thompson

This gives cybercriminals an advantage in evading security solutions and programs.

“If you’re going on a website you’ve never been to before, I think by default you should be suspicious and it turns out these ‘One-Day Wonders’ get created so it’s impossible to keep a static list of non-bad places because new bad places come up all the time,” said Thompson.

He says when surfing the web be aware of any potential changes to the Internet browser.

“There might be a vulnerability that you don’t know about or the manufacturer of the browser might not know about either. By clicking on that link it takes you to a place with malicious software that takes advantage of vulnerability in the browser itself.”

To get an upper hand against hackers, Blue Coat suggests security officials need to elevate the daily threat risk levels and “utilize security controls that have real-time intelligence to identify ‘One-Day Wonders’ and block access to those that are malicious.”