More than Half of the World's Malicious Websites Are Hosted in the US

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Yesterday, German security firm G DATA published its PC Malware Report that included an analysis of the threat landscape for the second half of 2015.
According to the company's report, in the second half of last year, its security products detected 2,098,062 new malware variants, bringing the 2015 total to 5,143,78, which is less compared to 2014's total of nearly 6 million malware variants.
Gambling sites are the most likely to host malicious content
The most popular malware variant during the second half of 2015 was an adware program called Script.Adware.DealPly.G, seen in 22.9 percent of all malware detections.
Most of this malware was distributed via spam email, but also via so-called "evil" websites. Based on the evil website's server location, 57 percent were hosted in the US. This should come as no surprise since the US also harbors more than half of the world's data centers.
Based on the evil website's domain of activity, G DATA experts saw a clear-cut trend of using gambling sites to spread malware. These types of sites were the source of 18.7 percent of all attacks, followed by blogs with a 12.9 percent ratio, and technology and telecommunications sites with 10.8 percent.
Dridex becomes a behemoth in H2 2015
Out of all the malware detected in 2015, even if not the predominant threat, banking trojans were among the most dangerous. In the second half of 2015, Dridex massively expanded its operations, taking up a huge piece of the market, with only Gozi and Vawtrack barely managing to keep their shares intact.
Analyzing banking trojans as a whole, G DATA looked at their targets, meaning the banks into whose websites banking trojans inject malicious code to steal the user's login credentials.
During the second half of 2015, the most targeted bank was the Santander Group (Spain), with an attack probability of 45 percent, followed by three UK banks, Lloyds, RBS, and Barclays, all with a probability of around 35 percent.
G DATA's 20-page report provides a more in-depth analysis of the whole threat landscape and is available for download from the company's website.





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