Google Finds 800,000 Websites Breached Worldwide

In the past year, the search engine giant has detected close to 800,000 sites infected with drive-by download malware and other malicious content aimed at nabbing unsuspecting visitors. Google has spotted some 16,500 newly infected websites each week over the past year -- a total of around 800,000 compromised sites worldwide.

The search engine giant is well aware of the challenge this poses for many owners of those websites once they are alerted to the attacks, and today published findings of a study it conducted with University of California Berkeley, on ways to assist webmasters in recovering from website breaches.

Google and Berkeley found that among webmasters who register their sites with Google’s Search Console, contacting a webmaster via email about his or her breached site was the best bet: 75% of webmasters who were emailed during the study were able to fix their breached sites; browser warnings (54%) and Google search warnings (43%) were next-best.