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What countries have the riskiest websites?

Jared Moya — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:03:14 +0000

One of the world’s leading security technology companies breaks down the world’s countries that have the most number of web sites with malicious downloads, browser exploits and spam.

McAfee recently announced the results of its SiteAdvisor research report which created a global road map of the riskiest, and the safest, places to surf and search on the internet.

It analyzed and ranked 265 top-level domains like Japan (.jp), France (.fr) and Commercial (.com) based on McAfee’s Web safety tests for spyware, spam, exploits and scams.

The report is called “Mapping the Mal Web,” and unsurprisingly reveals large differences in safety from one domain to another. It estimates that each month, internet users make more than 550 million clicks to “risky” Web sites and that even relatively safe domains like Germany (.de) or the United Kingdom (.uk) account for millions of risky clicks.

“With this report, McAfee has created a guide book to the Web’s most dangerous top level domains,” said Mark Maxwell, Senior Product Manager, McAfee Consumer and Small Business. “When it comes to safety, it turns out that the Web is no different than the physical world. There are safe neighborhoods and safe Web domains, and then there are places no one should ever visit.”

In compiling its report, McAfee’s Site Advisor added an intuitive red, yellow, or green ratings to sites and search results based on proprietary tests of millions of Web sites representing more than 95% of the trafficked Web.

Red ratings were given to risky sites that fail one or more of McAfee’s tests for adware, spyware, viruses, exploits, spammy e-mail, excessive pop-ups or strong affiliations with other red-rated sites. Green- rated sites passed each of these tests. Lastly, Yellow ratings were given to sites which passed McAfee’s safety tests but, which still have nuisances, such as excessive pop-ups, which thereby warrant a user advisory.

Key Findings?

The incidence of red and yellow sites varies dramatically across top- level domains, ranging from a low of 0.1% for Finland (.fi) to a high of 10.1% for the tiny island of Tokelau (.tk). Overall, 4.1% of all sites tested by SiteAdvisor are rated red or yellow.
Some Web activities, like registering at a site or downloading a file, are significantly more risky when done at certain domains. For example, giving an e-mail address to a random .info domain results in a stunning 73.2% chance of receiving spammy e-mail.
The most risky large country domains are Romania (.ro, 5.6% risky sites) and Russia (.ru, 4.5% risky sites). These country domains are also the most likely to host exploit or “drive-by-download” sites.
“.info” is the riskiest generic domain, with 7.5% of its sites rated as risky. .com is the second most risky generic domain, with 5.5% of sites rated as risky.
“.gov” is the only frequently tested domain for which SiteAdvisor has found no risky sites. .gov is only available to United States government agencies.
A consumer is almost 12 times more likely to encounter a drive-by-download while surfing Russian domains as Columbian ones.
Registering at a Web site in India results in a 4.3% chance of getting spammy e-mail. Taking the same action with a domain registered in China yields a 7.2% chance.
5.2% of Vietnamese Web sites have risky downloads. Just 0.5% of Singaporean sites host such files.
2.7 million times every month, casual Web surfers visit risky Dutch Web sites. Even though Hong Kong has approximately the same percentage of risky Web sites, those risky domains receive just 52,000 clicks each month.
Four of the five least risky country TLDs(top level domains) are Nordic countries – Finland (0.10%), Norway (.no, 0.16%), Sweden (.se, 0.21%) and Iceland (.is, 0.19%). Ireland (.ie, 0.11%) rounds out the top five least risky country TLDs.
Even though the Netherlands (.nl), Germany (.de) and the United Kingdom (.uk) are all relatively safe TLDs, ranking 31st, 33rd and 51st most risky, each of their TLDs account for more than 2 million clicks to red and yellow sites every month. Likewise Japan (.jp) is ranked 57th most risky and yet red and yellow rated .jp sites receive an estimated 1.6 million clicks each month.

Risk by region?
Asia/Pacific

The countries of China (.cn) and South Korea (.kr) were found to be the riskiest major country domains in the Asia/Pacific region, with 3.7% and 2.6% of their sites rated as risky, respectively. Japan and Australia (.au) are overwhelmingly less risky, with just 0.4% and 0.2% risky sites, respectively.

Europe and the Middle East

Romania and Russia are considered to be the most risky domains in the Europe/Middle East region, with 5.6% and 4.5% risky results, respectively. By contrast, Germany, the region’s domain with the most tested sites, has just over 1% risky sites.

The Americas

Here in my own backyard, Latin American and South American countries are somewhat safer than countries in other regions. According to a recent study Internet penetration rates in Latin and South American countries are modest. 19.8% of Argentineans, 18.6% of Mexicans and 11.3% of Brazilians are online. By comparison, 70.5% of South Koreans and 63.6% of Americans are online.

McAfee apparently found that economically motivated scammers seek out the largest Web audiences possible in order to maximize their profit potential.

At 2.1% red and yellow, the United States (.us) is the riskiest TLD in the Americas, while Venezuela (.ve) is the riskiest TLD in Latin and South America, with 1.5% of sites rated as risky. Brazil (.br), Mexico (.mx) and Argentina (.ar) are all relatively safe domains, each with just under one percent risky sites.

Riskiest for Downloads?

Of those sites with tested downloads, Somoa (.ws), .biz and Bulgaria (.bg) are the riskiest. 14.0%, 11.4% and 9.9%. In other words, among the ese country’s TLDs you have at least a 1 in 10 chance of downloading from a risky site.

Riskiest for Spam?

An astonishing 73.2% of the more than 6,000 .info sites that McAfee tested for e-mail practices are rated risky, meaning that SiteAdvisor registrations at these sites resulted in the receipt of high volume e-mail, spammy e-mail or both.

Russia and South Korea trail the .info TLD with 21.7% and 19.6% respectively. While less risky than registering at a .info domain, consumers who provide their e-mail addresses to randomly chosen Korean or Russian domains have a 1 in 5 chance of receiving high volume e-mail, highly commercial e-mail or both.

Riskiest for Exploits?

You are more than 5 times as likely to encounter an exploit site while browsing a .nu or .ru based site than while surfing .com TLDs. In fact, the tiny island of Niue and the massive Russia vie for the domain most frequently used to launch an exploit or drive-by-download type attack. While rare – just 0.45% and 0.43% of sites tested, respectively – exploits are arguably one of the most dangerous kinds of threats that Internet users face today because successful exploits can lead to permanent computer failure and identity theft.

Which Domains are the Safest?

Four of the five least risky country TLDs are the Nordic countries: Finland (0.10%), Norway (0.16%), Sweden (0.21%) and Iceland (0.19%). Ireland (0.11%) rounds out the top five least risky country TLDs.

McAfee feels that the reason these countries have the safest TLDs is due to the fact that their governments have stricter regulations of these domains. Registrations in Norway are limited to companies registered with the government. Prior to 2003, Finland and Sweden had similar requirements.

“.gov” is the only frequently tested TLD for which SiteAdvisor found no risky sites. “.edu” is also apparently quite safe, with just 0.3% of sites rated risky. It makes sense in both cases since there are strict registration requirements which obviously limit who can operate sites with these domains.

Which Domains are the Riskiest?

Seven TLDs (.com, .info, .net, .biz, Tuvalu (.tv), Cocos Islands (.cc), and China (.cn)) earn the dubious distinction of ranking in the top 20 riskiest for each of the four risky facets we examined.

Of these seven domains, .biz and .info are the overall worst domains with highly risky rankings in each of the four categories:

“.info” ranks 2nd in overall risk, 1st in spam, 10th in download risk, and 12th in exploit risk.

“.biz” ranks 6th in overall risk, 6th in spam, 2nd in download risk, and 5th in exploit risk.

Conclusions?

I think it’d have to be the fact that once again, NEVR, EVER DOWNLOAD anything from sites you either don’t know or are from a suspect location or domain.

For example, thinking of purchasing an item from a site located in Russia and they are requesting your credit card info? Probably not a good idea to say the least. Is it unfair to legitimate Russian sites? Yes but, I don’t think the legitimate Russian sites will exactly line up in droves to help you fix your credit or repay lost money if a site steals your credit card info or fails to send you an item as promised. It’s called “street smarts.”

Furthermore, when it comes to spam an unwanted e-mail its best to have what I call a “dump mailbox,” an e-mail account that you use only for the purposes of registering or activating site memberships, promotions, or other online activities that involve sites that you never want to hear from in a million years.

Moreover, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and simply avoiding unknown sites or shady sounding deals can go a long way towards keeping you and your PC safe.

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/security/What_countries_have_the_riskiest_websites’;

SOULXTC: “walkin’ the streets of P2P”

Spam surge drives net crime spree

Jared Moya — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 19:48:31 +0000

The tussle between computer security companies trying to protect your PC and the bad guys that try to compromise it is often characterised as an arms race.

Sometimes the security companies have the upper hand as they develop and deploy novel techniques to spot and stop malicious software of all stripes.

And sometimes, such as in 2006, the bad guys are on top. And nowhere has this been more apparent than in the realm of that old favourite – spam.

In the closing months of 2006 spam volumes jumped enormously. According to e-mail filtering firm Postini, spam volumes increased by 73% in the three months to December.

Report: Spammers Shift to Blogs and IM

Jared Moya — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 20:19:55 +0000

A growing number of spammers are using mobile text messaging, blogs, instant messaging, and social-networking sites to deliver their unsolicited sales pitches, a new report has found.

Despite the increased prevalence of advanced spam-fighting tools, spam is once again on the rise, and spammers are abandoning more traditional methods of electronic communication in favor of those that permit more targeted spam blasts, according to new research by MessageLabs.

The research also indicated that spammers have begun to develop more sophisticated and malicious software to harvest e-mail addresses and even steal the identity of unsuspecting netizens.

“The increased convergence of threats across e-mail, Web, and instant messaging — combined with the increased sophistication of techniques — is an interesting new development,” said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer at MessageLabs. “A harmless looking e-mail can quickly become a Web threat.”

Anti-spam p2p

Jared Moya — Tue, 30 May 2006 18:35:33 +0000

Since spammers have larger numbers than we do, we must build our numbers up, be mobile and not be targetted. This is what the new anti-spammer program intends to do. The development team intends for the program to complain to only a very minimal number of spamvertised web sites. This is being done so that the program can be downloaded by a large number of people, and yet be perceived as actually doing something to go after spammers. The program will get its instructions and updates from p2p networks. This is being done so there’ll be many, many spread-out targets rather than one or a few central targets to attack.

With the exception of dropping email or complaints into a special folder, there’ll be little action required by users to run our program. The program will periodically checked for updates from other peers and send any updated instruction to other peers. The complaint instruction file will be cryptographically signed so it’llbe extremely difficult to substitute a malicious instruction file. The updates will be released from different locations and peers each time a new file is released. This will prevent spammers from tracking down or shutting down the origin of the files.

There’s a need for secrecy because spammers aren’t the most moral people on the planet and can be pretty ruthless. Many are also involved in organized crime. We don’t want to see our efforts derailed before they even have a chance to get off the ground. When the program is released, it’ll be open source so anyone who wants to can see how it works and help to improve it.

P2P Tech Fights Spam

Chris — Thu, 25 May 2006 05:36:37 +0000

In the wake of Blue Frog’s anti-spam program shut down a few weeks ago, an open source group has launched Black Frog, a distributed do it yourself anti-spam effort.

The basic gist of it is for every piece of spam will get a response, and if enough users participate it will effectively DDOS the spammers off the net.

Black Frog Wiki

Jailed spam king caught conspiring to kill witness

Chris — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 20:15:48 +0000

Spam king and online drugstore operator Christopher William Smith, aka Rizler, 26, who is awaiting trial at the Sherburne County Jail, Elk River, Minn., used his phone privileges to arrange a hit on a witness and the witness’ family.

According to the indictment, Smith called an acquaintance from jail March 4 and allegedly stated he intended to threaten and intimidate a witness he expected would testify against him in his upcoming trial on drug and other charges. The indictment alleges Smith also said he intended to have the witness or the witness’ family killed.

It was one of several calls made by Smith to numbers not linked with his defense attorney that officials at the Elk River facility monitored and recorded.