Stopbadware.org has released its latest findings on the prevalence of what it refers to as “badware,” and the upward trend is not surprising. What is a bit startling, however, is how much of it flows from just one nation.
Using data from Google’s Safe Browsing initiative, StopBadware.org analyzed over 200,000 websites found to engage in badware behavior. The analysis found that over half of the sites were based on Chinese network blocks, with a small number of blocks accounting for most of the infected sites in that country. The U.S. accounted for 21% of infected sites, and these were spread across a wide range of networks.
Compared to last year, the total number of sites was much higher, likely due both to increased scanning efforts by Google and to increased use of websites as a vector of malware infection. Several U.S.-based network blocks that were heavily infected last year, including that of web hosting company iPowerWeb, whose network block topped last year’s list, no longer host large numbers of infected sites.
With 52% of identified badware sites, China hosts far more sites than any other country. The U.S. is second with 21%. No other country hosts more than 4% of the world’s badware sites, though a total of 106 countries host at least one infected site and 38 countries host at least a hundred.
StopBadware.org also analyzed, for the seven countries topping the list of infections, the relationship between a country’s Internet-using population and its number of badware sites. It is difficult to find current numbers of Internet users by country, but using the most recent data (ranging from 2005 to 2008) from the CIA Fact Book, StopBadware.org calculated the badware sites per million Internet users for the world (210 sites per million) and for each of the seven countries:
| Badware sites per million Internet users |
Country |
| China | 689 |
| Russia | 307 |
| United States | 212 |
| Germany | 135 |
| France | 128 |
| Republic of Korea | 115 |
| Great Britain | 60 |
These numbers reinforce the dominance of China as a malware host, with an infection rate over three times that of the world average. Russia also stands out with a disproportionately high rate (possibly skewed by rapid growth in Internet use not reflected in the CIA’s 2006 numbers), while the United States is just about average. Relative to their populations, the western European countries and the Republic of Korea are far less likely to host badware sites than other nations.
