Google, Facebook Top 2010 Most Dangerous List

Photo: JoLin

Consumers, beware: 2010 proved dangerous for users of certain products.

From hardware to social networking sites, Trend Micro’s Trend Labs 2010’s Most Dangerous List shines a harsh light on some of last year’s risky products.

Google took high honors in 2010. Named most dangerous website, the popular site served as a bastion for cyber criminals. Users suffered through consistent malware attacks and the network was frequently targeted with malvertisements.

Following Google’s infamous standing, Facebook takes its place as most dangerous social networking site, falling victim to malware attacks.

The German identification card reader “won” the most dangerous hardware prize. Encoded private information, such as fingerprints, proved easy to steal with card readers.

WordPress showed as the riskiest web-based software. Cyber criminal used the software’s blogs to hatch their nefarious plots, using redirection chains for attacks or other black hat search engine optimization-related schemes.

Internet Explorer came away with the most dangerous runtime environment spot.

Apple’s Mac OS X. took the riskiest OS spot. Long patch cycles increased risk in spite of maintenance releases to fix security issues.

Rounding out the most dangerous list was CO.CC for most dangerous top-level domain; Internet Relay Chat for most dangerous IP label; PDF for riskiest file format; and the browser won for most common infected channel.

While many of 2010’s most dangerous may prove difficult, if not impossible, to avoid in 2011, users should venture into the fray with caution.