Lleyton Hewitt of Australia serves to Marius Copil of Romania during their men's singles match at the Brisbane International tennis tournament in Brisbane, January 3, 2014.
IN PHOTO: Lleyton Hewitt of Australia serves to Marius Copil of Romania during their men's singles match at the Brisbane International tennis tournament in Brisbane, January 3, 2014. REUTERS/Jason Reed REUTERS/Jason Reed

According to Trend Micro's third quarter security report for 2014, it appears that there is a rise in malicious links across Australia. The report reveals that Australians have clicked on more than 45.5 million malicious links in the third quarter, which shows significant increase compared to the 39 million recorded visits in the second quarter and roughly 27 million during the first quarter of this year.

The report ranks Australia as fifth in the world for countries with the highest number of visits to malicious sites. Top on the list is the United States followed by Japan, France and Italy.

The sudden increase in malicious attacks during the third quarter was attributed to the Shellshock event that has threatened more than half a billion of services and devices worldwide. Looking back, Shellshock is a nickname for a bug which allows an attacker to perform the same commands as a legitimate user. The attacker has access to a remote vector that can remotely inject Shellshock commands on the user's system without the need for authentication. Another reason for the increase is the rise in volume and sophistication of online attacks and mobile app vulnerabilities.

In addition, the number of malware detections in Australia during the third quarter stands at more than 14.4 million, a big increase compared to the 11.2 million malware detected in the second quarter and 10.5 million in the first quarter. One big target for malicious attackers is the Point-of-Sale (POS) systems of many big retailers that happen to be highly accessible and vulnerable, The Australian reports.

According to Trend Micro's senior software architect director Jon Oliver, preparation is the key and consumers together with many organisations must be well educated with all the attacks and its risks which are significantly rising in volume and sophistication. While the cyber attacks are becoming more and more complex, people must be made aware about their online vulnerability. Especially now with the holiday season, consumers must be more careful and more vigilant.

On a global perspective, Trend Micro's report recorded that online banking infection grew from 112,000 in the last quarter 137,000 in the third quarter. The number of phishing URLs that was blocked rose to 721,000 in the third quarter, which is a big jump from 138,000 in the second quarter.