June 4th, 2008
The Most Dangerous Domains to Surf
By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews
Given time, I suppose many people could come up with a list of questionable “domains,” ones you should probably have some concern about when surfing to them. Particularly country domains, such as .uk, .us, and so on. In a study released Wednesday by security firm McAfee, they gave us their own view of the most dangerous domains to surf to.
The Hong Kong (.hk) domain jumped 28 spots and is now the #1 most dangerous place to surf and search on the web according a new report called “Mapping the Mal Web Revisited.” This is the second annual such report.
According to the report, 19.2% of all Web sites ending in the .hk domain pose a security threat to Web users. Meanwhile China (.cn) is second at over 11%. The most popular domain, .com ranks at #11 overall.
How did McAfee get this data? Using their SiteAdvisor technology, of course. The study compared the ratings of sites found in each of the 265 country and generic domains (such as .com) and ranked them by the number of risky Web sites found in each domain. Risky sites, according to the report, were ones that contained “adware, spyware, viruses, spam, excessive pop-ups, browser exploits or links to other red-rated sites.”
In terms of safety, Finland (.fi) replaced Ireland (.is) as the safest online destination with 0.05%, followed by Japan (.jp).
Other key findings from McAfee “Mapping the Mal Web Revisited” report 2008 include:
- The chance of downloading spyware, adware, viruses or other unwanted software from surfing the Web increased 41.5% over 2007
- Sites which offer downloads such as ringtones and screen savers that are also loaded with viruses, spyware and adware increased over the last year from 3.3% to 4.7%
- The Philippines (.ph) experienced a 270% increase in overall riskiness
- Tokelau (.tk) and Samoa (.ws) were notably safer in 2008 dropping to 28th and 12th
- In Europe, Spain (.es) experienced a 91% increase in overall risk
What does all this mean? Well, obviously, for McAfee it means, you consumers need to buy our security products and use our SiteAdvisor tech (free). For consumers it means, make sure you have some sort of up-to-date virus scanner on your system, don’t accept unwanted pop-up offers on sites you go to, and “be careful out there.”
The full report can be downloaded from McAfee’s site … when they get around to posting it, that is.
Why Listen To A**holes? says:
I wouldn’t trust McAfee to find fleas on my dog!!! What a piece of crap they put out now!!!! It uses about 30% of your memory & processor to miss 20% of the newest viruses!!! Norton is worse, try Avast or AVG - not only are they free, they do a 10 times better job using 2% of the PC resources that “The Big Two” (pieces of CRAP) use, while charging ridiculous fees for actually doing worse than nothing, they give you a false sense of security!!!
June 4th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
LZW says:
We might not need a Site Advisor if ICANN would create a “.malware” TLD and put all the bad sites there. Yet they would not allow “.xxx” TLD’s either…
We already know ICANN is biased because they allow other special interest groups like “.pro” & “.museum.”
ICANN has a ccTLD for every country you can imagine so they deeply interested in sorting out the internet geographically. Other then the big 6, com/org/net/edu/gov/mil, all other TLD’s are created for biased political motivations and the porn industry does not have any political clout… The malware industry obviously does have political clout because I’m sure they prefer having their creations blended in with the whole internet so they are harder to filter. The fact there are no “.malware” domains means that ICANN are in bed with big malware!
June 5th, 2008 at 6:02 am
Mickey Spillane says:
ICANN THE JURY
by
Mickey Spillane
I was in a hard-knocks dive on Second Avenue, hunched over a cold Pabst
and a deck of Luckies, when she came through the door in a dress that
must have taken three other dames to help her get into. Outside, a hard
night rain was trying its damnedest to wash the city clean again. A fool’s
errand, but the rain didn’t know.
It got real quiet in the place. Then she swiveled across the floor, one hip
at a time, and it got even quieter. Broads like that didn’t come to this
part of town.
She came up to me and stood there close, and I could smell the rain and
the expensive perfume in her hair. I could smell her desperation, too.
She was a stacked doll and she knew it. She leaned forward to give me
a better view of her cleavage and made her eyes get that bedroom look.
It had probably worked on a thousand guys. It was working on me.
I shifted on the stool, letting my coat fall back just enough to show
her the notched .45 in the speed rig riding my hip.
“Spit it out, sister!” I growled. “What’s the beef?”
She tried the teary thing then, made those big green eyes get a little
misty. She was good. “The word on the street is that you’re the only
one who can help me,” she whispered huskily. “It’s….a domain thing.”
That one earned her only a bitter laugh. I leaned in and gave her the
cop eyes, the hard look that makes the big ones stop in their tracks
if they’ve got any brains at all. Some of them don’t. That’s what the
speed rig is for.
“Hit the bricks, baby,” I barked. “Go down to the Federal Building and
sell your sob story to those tame punks at ICANN. I don’t work for them
anymore. I settle things the hard way. The permanent way.”
Her hand shot out and I felt those long red nails digging into the sleeve
of my coat. A little shudder went through her, and it wasn’t just fear.
There was another scent that cut through the rain and perfume and the
bar smells, and her eyes went all funny again, but this time it was for real.
“I know,” she whispered.
June 7th, 2008 at 6:11 am
Eamon says:
Ireland is .ie, not .is as stated.
.is is Iceland.
June 7th, 2008 at 6:30 pm