Researchers from Google surveyed billions of sites and analyzed 4.5 million web pages, showing the sheer volume of web-based malware.

Googles "The Ghost in the Browser" study reports that one in 10 web pages inspected are laced with malicious code. Of the sites the research team analyzed, 450,000 were capable of launching drive-by-downloads to install malicious code, like spyware and Trojans, onto users computers. Another 700,000 web pages were found to contain code that could compromise your PC.

Researchers are in the process of "mapping the malware threat" with an interest in creating safer surfing tools in the future.

BBC News has the full story.