According to the Kaspersky Lab study “Java under attack – the evolution of exploits in 2012-2013”, it has been revealed that the number of attacks using Java exploits from September 2012 to August 2013 amounted to 14.1 million which is one-third more than in the same period in 2011-12.
Traditionally, the most frequent targets for attacks have been Oracle Java, Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader. However, the Kaspersky Lab study revealed that in the past year Java is increasingly becoming the prime target for cybercriminals.
Of the 14.1 million attacks detected using Java exploits, most happened in the second half of the study period, over 8.54 million attacks were registered from March to August 2013, up 52.7% on the previous six months.
The large number of attacks launched using Java exploits is little surprise: over the 12 months of Kaspersky Lab’s research, 161 vulnerabilities were identified in Java. Six of the newly detected vulnerabilities were rated as critical, or very dangerous. These six were most actively used in attacks by cybercriminals.
Java is a victim of its own popularity. Cybercriminals know they are better off focussing their efforts on finding a vulnerability in Java and then attacking millions of computers at one stroke, rather than creating multiple exploits for several less popular products and still finding that they are affecting fewer computers, said Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky, Head of the Vulnerability Research Group, Kaspersky Lab.
To protect themselves against the potential costs of a malicious attack launched using Java exploits, Kaspersky Lab’s experts advise both home and corporate users to install Java updates promptly as well as choosing security solutions that can reliably block exploit-based cyber-attacks.
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