Amazon, Top Malware-Hosting ISP; Solutionary

Solutionary recently released its Q2-2014 Threat Intelligence Report through its SERT (Security Engineering Research Team) that located the ten most severe international ISPs (Internet Service Providers) as well as other hosting providers which harbored malicious software. Of the said ten, Amazon Web Services ranked No.1 as a worldwide ISP that hosted malware among the over 21,000 ISPs examined.

Possibly even unfortunate is that Amazon harbored malware amounting 16% during the entire 2013 that increased to a massive volume of 41% by the time it was July 2014 -almost becoming threefold within six months.

Evidently, it isn't that cyber-crooks have abused Amazon in an unprecedented instance to host big malware volumes. For, according to Solutionary, the situation was same as described within its SERT report of Q4-2013, while security experts from Kaspersky, during 2011, found Amazon Web Services supporting the infamous SpyEye Trojan.

The above can be partly attributed to the scale and widespread utilization of Amazon with respect to its cloud facility as well as the low prices it carries. Thus, any attempting Web hacker could purchase server screenshots available underground followed with loading them onto Amazon for constructing network of online sites spreading malware.

Meanwhile, service provider GoDaddy was behind just 2% of malicious programs, an improvement from the high 14% of malware it was behind during Q4-2013.

Solutionary says the situation with GoDaddy is either because it made improved efforts in spotting as also disabling malevolent websites else the assaulters shifted focus onto different ISPs. To cite examples, Website Welcome and Akrino both service providers that previously were behind below 1% of malicious programs currently occupy positions among the ten most prevalent malware-harboring ISPs.

According to Solutionary, the ten most severe ISPs harbor 52% of the malicious programs spotted during Q2-2014.

Moreover, the company's gathered data from honeynets and honeypots indicate that USA hosted 56% of the identified malicious programs, indicating a 12% hike from Q4-2013.

This increase, according to Director of Research Rob Kraus from Solutionary's SERT, is probably because malicious actors used Dropbox and Amazon's cloud structure in an increased manner. Networkworld.com published this dated July 15, 2014.

» SPAMfighter News - 7/25/2014