Malware comes from legitimate sites that have been hacked

"The URL is no longer an accurate representation of the source content from the Web page"

clipped from blog.washingtonpost.com Three Quarters of Malicious Web Sites Are Hacked Three-quarters of all Web sites that try to foist malicious software on visitors are legitimate sites that have been hacked, a report released today found. Even worse, most of these compromised sites are social networking communities and some of the Internet's most popular destinations. Websense found that 60 percent of the Top 100 most popular sites this year have either hosted malware or forwarded visitors to malicious sites. The company also says that nine out of 10 of those compromised sites were social networking or Web search sites. Browser add-ons like Site Advisor and Web of Trust (WOT) can help people searching the Web determine whether the sites they are searching for have a nasty reputation. But such services do little to aid in flagging legitimate sites that were recently hacked and seeded with malicious software.