Number of sites distributing Social Engineering Malware and Exploits over time

Prevalence of exploits targeting specific CVEs over time

Number of sites practicing IP Cloaking over time

Malware distributors are increasingly relying upon ‘cloaking’ as a technique to evade detection. The concept behind cloaking is simple: serve benign content to detection systems, but serve malicious content to normal web page visitors. Over the years, we have seen more malicious sites engaging in IP cloaking. To bypass the cloaking defense, we run our scanners in different ways to mimic regular user traffic.Our report analyzed four years of data to uncover trends in malware distribution on the web, and it demonstrates the ongoing tension between malware distributors and malware detectors. To help protect Internet users, even those who don’t use Google, we have updated the Safe Browsing infrastructure over the years to incorporate many state-of-the-art malware detection technologies. We hope the findings outlined in this report will help other researchers in this area and raise awareness of some of the current challenges.