China hosting over half of malicious sites

StopBadware.org report highlights Chinese dominance in web malware.

A report from

StopBadware.org

released last week found that 52% of malicious websites were hosted in China, with the US the only other major player in the field with 21%.

The report was compiled from the list of active malicious sites flagged by

Google

‘s

Safe Browsing

initiative in late May, a total of over 200,000 unique URLs. These were traced back to autonomous system (AS) blocks operated by single entities, which were then linked to their registered nationalities. A list of the top ten AS blocks was made public, with six of the top ten, including the top four, based in China. Three were US-based while one, ninth overall, was maintained in France. Results were also correlated with the numbers of internet users in each country, and China once again had a significant lead, although by this measure Russia overtook the US thanks to far lower internet usage.

A summary of the report’s findings is at

StopBadware.org


here

, with the full PDF

here

.

Posted on 30 June 2008 by

Virus Bulletin