But rather than malware inserted into specially-created web pages, cybercriminals are increasingly hacking into legitimate websites and inserting malicious code that infects a surfer's PC when they follow a link to the site.

ScanSafe said that the websites targeted by many of these attacks are those that create the 'long tail' of the web.

'Long tail' websites are those that don't necessarily see high volumes of visitors individually, but collectively account for a significant amount of web traffic.

This means that the source of the malware is more difficult to pin down, as it isn't being hosted on high-profile sites.

"Ongoing investigation by our Security Threat Alert Team indicates this is a large scale attack that is growing exponentially and is not being detected by the majority of web crawlers," said Mary Landesman, senior security researcher, ScanSafe.

Landesman also warned that services such as McAfee's SiteAdvisor were not always flagging up sites that had been compromised and advised surfers to be cautious.

www.scansafe.com

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