China hosts nearly half of all malware sites

China is host to almost half of the world's malware-infected Web sites.

According to a report released Monday by antivirus company Sophos, China--including Hong Kong--hosted 44.8 percent of the world's infected sites in August. The U.S. ranked a distant second, hosting 20.8 percent of sites that contain malicious code.

The number of infected Web pages has also grown. Sophos said it detected an average of 5,000 new infected pages each day in the month of August.

The company warned that simply staying clear of sites hosted in the top three countries of China, the U.S. and Russia is not an effective method of avoiding malware.

"Hackers are hijacking Web sites around the world to make them point to malware on sites based in China, the U.S. and Russia," Carole Theriault, Sophos senior security consultant, said in a statement.

Sophos also warned about a sharp rise in spam pointing people to these infected sites. Malicious senders, in an attempt to bypass attachment virus scanners, are using messages that direct people to Web sites with malicious code. Computers get infected when people click on the links in the e-mail message.

"Most malware writers...are using spam and the Web to infect users," Theriault said. "Criminals are hard at work trying to slip past filters at the corporate gateway."

June saw a spike in spam hosted on Chinese domains, when the figure rose from almost zero to 450 spam domains.

Victoria Ho of ZDNet Asia reported from Singapore.

[Stating]

Rope They're Hanging Us With

China's selling us the rope that we're hanging ourselves with. Buy Chinese products to:

a) Put American factory workers out of jobs
b) Fund the Chinese military
c) Fund Chinese criminal activity with or without the consent of the Chinese government
d) Allow China to blackmail the U.S. because they hold $1.3 trillion in U.S. debt
e) Allow 1,300 Chinese Army backed businesses to operate in the U.S.

Do the math.

[Xenu7-214951314497503184010868]

If there's corruption, it's gotta be China

China has become the festering boil of this planet. It's time it was lanced.

[Fremia]

sounds like someone is

ignorant of just corrupt the U.S. Government is. It is probably more so than China could ever hope to be.

Check this place out if proof is what is needed. WWW.copvcia.com

[rash_answer]

here's the rest of story

Another uninformed citizen...
'China hosts nearly half of all malware' story is propaganda my friend...
here's the rest of story.

China's population is 20% of the world population.
USA's population is 4.6% of the world population.
(2006 DSW-Datareport)

China's 44.8 percent of the Malware vs 20 percent of the world population = a rate of 2.24 percent of malware for each 1 percent of China's population.

USA's 20.8 percent of the Malware vs 4.6 percent of the world population = a rate of 4.52 percent of malware for each 1 percent of USA's population. A rate that is more then twice that of China.

If your looking for corruption, deception and general war mongering, sir, then don't look beyond the borders of the USA

[Leria]

I have to agree

I have to agree. Whether it is child porn sites with children actually physically forced into the sexual situations, malware sites, etc..... they are all connected with China or Russia in some way.

We need to have a deal with China that when someone points out that a Chinese website is filled with malware and it is confirmed by the FBI or some other reliable organization.... China has to IMMEDIATELY shut that site down, find the operators, and ship them over to the United States for their just imprisonment.

[spothannah]

Malware sites

I'm not computer literate. What I would like to know is: Can these people be identified/discovered/arrested/located? Or, is that impossible because of the technology? I mean could someone figure out that is is John Doe who lives at 123 Street, City, State Country? I guess what I'm asking is what kind of problem is this. Can someone find the person or is it that it's impossible to press charges because of the laws or is it something else?

[Stating]

Possible, Yes

It's possible to get email owner information and trace emails back to an IP address and then get find out who used that IP address. Law enforcement needs a court order to get the email provider and ISP that owns that IP address to turn over subscriber records. Of course, if it the the Administration that wants that information then no court order is really needed.

All this assumes that the offender provided useful registration info when he signed up, and did not use an open WiFi hotspot, anonymous proxy server, or other cloaking technology.

[Leria]

Nothing good does come out of China

Lately, nothing good has been coming out of China, though the Chinese government would like to disagree with that.