Report: US responsible for most malicious websites

A research study has revealed that most malicious websites are hosted on US servers and not in other countries like China.

The report is based on findings from an AVG study, which looked at threats reported over the last six months from 110 million worldwide users. According to the firm the research indicates an increase in malware-serving websites targeting end users, which focus on stealing online bank details, credit card information, personal identities and passwords to social sites.

AVG said that malicious code is not just an issue with outlaw servers located in countries with weak laws and lax enforcement.

“The results of this study shatter the myth that malicious code is primarily hosted in countries where e-crime laws are less developed,” said Karel Obluk, Chief Technology Officer, AVG Technologies. “Our research shows that malicious content is much more likely to show up on web servers in the U.S. than one in Asia or Eastern Europe. This makes perfect sense since the USA is a primary target market for the criminals and has rich and mature internet infrastructure making the threats both highly accessible and cheap to host. What is most striking is the clear rise in the number of malicious servers in the last six months. Today’s hacking techniques are highly evasive so the average user cannot tell if a website is serving malware or not. A web security product is needed.”

Obluk continued, “Even more important to note is that, on average during this six month period, about 50 percent of the domains hosted on these servers were online and hosting threats only one day or less. This transient nature makes them very hard to find and add to traditional reputation-based protection systems in time to be helpful to users.”