USA Still Leader of Global Phishing and Malware

The Websense Threat Report for 2012 published lately reveals that USA is still the global leader in malware hosting as well as malware connections, part of one neat planned strategy that cyber-criminals actively adopt.

The reason, according to the firm specializing in web-security, involves the improbable blockage of any America-based domain owing to its deleterious effect on Internauts. With that cyber-criminals become perceptive that they can capitalize on the feeling of trust, an understanding creates about the source being internal instead of any nasty person from Russia, Ukraine etc. SECURITY HISTRO reported this on March 28, 2012.

Furthermore, the report outlines that 50% of all malware sources belong to USA, while slightly above 33% of all supporters of malicious software, about the identical number during 2010, too are in USA.

Additionally, as per Websense, the ranking of Canada's malware situation too shot upwards recently, taking it to the second top position with 13.2% of all malware incidences. Other countries among the 5 highest malware ranking nations are Germany (5.4%), Holland (4.9%) and China (4.1%).

Previously the rankings of Russia and China were higher, states Websense, however, as these countries' IP ranges have been deactivated frequently compared to other countries, online crooks here are targeting victims with malware more through the exploitation of trustworthy sources like social-networking websites.

Intriguingly, Websense also talks about the 5 nations which have the greatest phishing incidences, wherein USA dominates at 59.9%. Canada follows at 9.8%, while the rest are Egypt (6.8%), Germany (2.3%), and UK (1.8%).

Vice-President Charles Renert of Websense Security Labs states that the top phishing countries' success is to do entirely with the lures and social engineering tricks the criminals apply there. Computerworld.co.nz published this on March 30, 2012.

Nevertheless, Websense reports certain good news too i.e. there has been a drop in spamming to 74% from the earlier 84%. Nearly every spam mail is an attempt to entice since 92% of e-mails from this total malicious lot carry a web-link. The declining e-mail junk likely as well indicates that crooks are increasingly abusing user-trust for social-networking websites, particularly Facebook, the report suggests.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 4/7/2012