Press release
USA is the primary source of global malware ahead of China and Eastern Europe
AMSTERDAM, March 10, 2010 - AVG Technologies, makers of the world's most popular free anti-virus software, today unveiled the results of a study which shows that - contrary to popular opinion - most malicious websites are hosted on US servers and not in other countries like China.
The AVG research study is based on the analysis of threats reported during the last 6 months, from AVG's 110 million worldwide users of its LinkScanner web security product. The research indicates an increase in malware serving websites targeting end users, which typically focus on stealing online banking credentials, credit card information, personal identities and passwords to social sites.
The detection and analysis of exploits was based on AVG's unique crowd-sourced methods for analysing web content for malicious or dangerous intent as reported by AVG's vast network of LinkScanner installations worldwide. AVG's research shows that malicious code is not just an issue with outlaw servers located in countries with weak laws and lax enforcement. Monitoring active web servers serving exploits around the world indicates that 44 per cent of the corrupted servers are hosted in the United States, followed by Germany and China at just 5 per cent each. Many of these malware-serving websites are legitimate sites compromised by hackers to serve exploits on their behalf. In total, exploitive servers were found in nearly 4,600 locations throughout the USA.
It is important to note that this research makes no statement about who owns or who is directing the efforts of these servers - for those criminals and/or criminal networks could be anywhere in the world - and they are.
"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 per cent 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."
As a preventive measure, users should look for web security protection when going online. AVG's LinkScanner, included in all of AVG's products, is a highly effective product to protect users from today's malware in real-time. AVG LinkScanner is available for a FREE download at: www.linkscanner.avg.com <http://www.linkscanner.avg.com>
