In its report, Whitehat credits the steady drop in web vulnerabilities to a combination of factors: An increase in regulatory compliance, clients and business partners who increasingly enforce security standards on companies, community awareness campaigns, and an increase in cybercrime that has pressured firms to secure themselves.

FORBES: Researchers Say The Web May Be Offering Fewer Footholds To Hackers

Web application vulnerabilities are discovered and used to compromise legitimate websites and force them to serve malware to selected visitors.

FORBES: To Stop Cybercrime: Understand Crime Logic, And Adapt

Attackers used booby-trapped web pages, vulnerabilities in popular applications, social engineering and many other tactics to gain access.

BBC: State-backed data spies hunt industrial secrets

Even if publicizing Web-based malware attacks wouldn't actively prevent identity, it might shame site owners into patching their vulnerabilities, suggests SANS Web security researcher Johannes Ullrich.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The methodologies employed in these wide spread attacks is typically the combination of new vulnerabilities and custom Trojan horses delivered over the web or through email.

FORBES: Bottom Line: Assume That You've Been Hacked

In fact, the company has already taken steps to protect users of its computers from Java vulnerabilities by disabling the program by default in Web browsers on Mac OSX late last year.

FORBES: Apple Reportedly Hit By Hackers Who Targeted Facebook, Says No Evidence Of Data Theft

"Increasingly, there's a rush for companies to get on the Web, and they've done it in ways that have serious vulnerabilities, " he says.

FORBES: Magazine Article

In fact, Grossman agrees that the sites' vulnerabilities weren't Microsoft's fault as much as the result of sloppy Web coding on the part of the Web sites' own developers, who failed to filter user input for manipulative commands.

FORBES: Google-Hacking Goes To China

"Our investigation has shown that there are no new or unknown vulnerabilities being exploited, " he wrote in a statement on the Microsoft Security Response Center's Web site on April 25.

FORBES: Google-Hacking Goes To China