Five ISPs hosting a third of malware, says study

StopBadware survey finds small group of ISPs most to blame.

In a recent study of almost 50,000 sites known to be hosting malware, five ISPs have been identified as repeat offenders, between them hosting over 17,000 infected pages.

The study, carried out by

StopBadware.org

, the international group of malware fighters founded in collaboration between Oxford and Harvard universities, examined sites submitted to

StopBadware.org

‘s clearing system by a wide range of trusted data providers, and recorded which ISP was hosting the malicious sites. Arizona-based

iPowerWeb

was found to be the worst offender, with 10,834 pages carrying malware hosted by its servers, while four others, including one in China, were found to be serving up between 786 and 2,513 pages each.

It is thought that the majority of the sites carrying the malicious code were legitimate sites which had been hacked thanks to poor security, weak passwords or software vulnerabilities, and all ISPs are encouraged to implement better policies regarding the detection and removal of malicious software from their servers.

Full details of the study can be found at

StopBadware.org

,

here

.

Posted on 09 May 2007 by

Virus Bulletin