Half of All Malware WebSites Hosted by China

As per the reports of anti-virus company Sophos released on 3rd August 2007, along with Hong Kong, China hosted 44.8% of the malware sites of the world in August 2007. US ranked second by hosting 20.8% Websites containing malicious code.

About 5,000 pages were infected each day in August 2007 detected by Sophos, thus increasing the number of infected Web pages. The idea of avoiding the hosted sites in China, US and Russia, the top three countries, would not be a full-proof method to avoid the malware. Websites based in these three countries are being hacked by hackers to make them malware point on sites hosted by the three nations. And cyber-crooks do not differentiate while targeting the Websites.

According to the senior security consultant at Sophos, Carole Theriault, hackers are continuing to look for rich picking on Web, tricking users to divulge their personal details. He also said that web hosts, ISPs and businesses are unable to protect their Websites properly, reported Computerweekly on 3rd September 2007.

People are warned against these infected sites by Sophos about their tremendous hike. Messages are used by the malicious senders to direct the users to malware-laden Websites. They do it for bypassing the attachment virus scanners. On clicking the links in the emails, computers get affected with malware.

The Web and spam is used by the malware writers to infect the users. Cyber-criminals are striving hard at the corporate gateway to bypass the virus filters, added Theriault. As the figure rose from zero to 450 domains in June 2007, there was a tremendous hike in the spam that China hosted.

Sopho, in the same report, also unveiled that the criminals are coming up with various other ideas to infect end user's PCs, as users are become aware and thus have improved the security.

According to the senior security analyst with Sophos in Burlington, Ron O'Brien, the users have become aware and they avoid clicking on attachments from unknown people, thus giving malware writers a hard time to figure out ways for sending the virus, as reported by CRN on 4th September 2007.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/14/2007