Millions of Websites Hacked by Malicious Widget?

A security expert with Armorize Technologies believes that as many as 5 million Web sites hosted by Network Solutions have been pushing malware.

Wayne Huang, co-founder and CTO of Armorize, who puts the number between 500,000 and 5 million infected sites, calls this "one of the biggest infections for drive-by download attacks" that he's seen. The infection has been linked to a widget installed by default on all "parked" domains hosted by Network Solutions. Computerworld explains:

The widget turned every infected domain into a drive-by attack site that launched the multi-exploit "Nuke" toolkit against users running Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera. If the kit successfully hacked the browser, a Trojan downloader hit the Windows PC, searches were redirected and pop-up advertisements appeared.

The downloader is a variant of the Koobface worm, which is best known for attacking Facebook and Twitter.

Network Solutions disputes Huang's estimate:

The numbers reported over the weekend are not accurate ... We're still investigating to determine the number affected.