U.S Hosts the Maximum Number of Malicious Websites

Security firm AVG Technologies released a research paper on March 10, 2010, whose outcomes indicate that the majority of bad websites (44%) receive their hosting services from U.S. servers. Following USA are China and Germany, each at 5%.

A majority of these sites that serve malware are originally unaffected before hackers actually compromise them to deliver exploits. It was found that, in all, almost 4,600 locations in the U.S had exploitative servers.

Remarking about the discoveries, the company reveals in its paper that it's truly incorrect that only those countries, which are lackadaisical about e-crime laws, host malware.

Karel Obluk, AVG's chief technology officer stated that malicious code is not only a problem related to illegal servers situated across countries that did not actively enforce e-crime laws. ITWire published this on March 11, 2010.

Obluk said that his company's study reveals that the malicious content has greater chances of emerging on U.S located Web-servers compared Eastern Europe or Asia. This is plausible as the cyber-criminals primarily target the U.S market, which has plenty of advanced Internet infrastructures that enable to access the threats more easily and also host them inexpensively.

The CTO further said that the most striking aspect about the malware-hosting servers is that they have increased in number from September 2009-February 2010. With modern hacking methods being extremely elusive, an ordinary user cannot identify whether or not a website is thrusting malicious content. Hence, there arises a need for a product that can properly secure the Web.

Obluk further added that it is worth noting that, during September 2009-February 2010, approximately half of all websites supported on the malicious servers were active as well as hosted malware for only 24-hours or less. Such temporary nature of the sites makes their detection quite difficult, and therefore requires conventional reputable security software to act on time, as per the news published by Frontier India on March 10, 2010.

In the meantime, according to the security experts, the AVG study suggests a rising number of websites serving a malware that target end-users. This malware commonly steals credit card details, Internet banking particulars, passwords for social-networking websites, and personal identities.

Related article: U.S. Businesses Lose $712 Per Worker Due to Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 19-03-2010

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