Half of Malware Orginates from Only 10 Networks
Thursday June 26, 2008
There are thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of malware threats out there on the Web. That is why it is prudent to protect your PC with antivirus software. It might surprise you though to find out that more than half of those threats are hosted on a mere 10 networks, or that 6 of those 10 networks are based in China. According to an article in The Register, separate reports from StopBadware.org and Knujon illustrate that the vast majority of the threats on the Internet seem to originate from a small handful of sites. I know it is the "in thing" to blame everything on China- especially when it comes to hacking, malware, and network activity. I don't want to contribute to any anti-China FUD, so I will also point out that Google was a prime offender as well. The report from StopBadware.org claims that 2%- or just over 4,000 malware hosting sites came from Google's servers.
Comments
Tony
I was told by a large Dept store salesperson that free antivirus just store the virus they remove on to your computer, don’t remove them and eventually the computer crashes with all the stored virus. Do free checkers AVG not do the job like he says? Can you help please - I am not very technically minded and would appreciate some advice on the effectiveness of free vs paid virus checkers.
Thanks Jill
Jill, what you were told by the salesperson may be right (TO AN EXTENT!). Of course, the fact that they’re a salesperson negates some of what they told you. Some A/V software just don’t work or are viruses themselves in disguise. But if you do research, search on Google, Yahoo or any one of the other search engines and look for consumer reviews/ratings, you can find plenty of good A/V / antispyware programs that will keep you safe.
In other words, they’re just trying to sell you some bloatware (software that’s not needed on your computer).