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Submitted by: Bill Hickey
NCVA List Master
NRT-0095 Riskiest Domains on the Web:
A global road map of the riskiest and safest places to surf online found Russian and Romanian sites among the top-level domains most commonly hosting malicious downloads, browser exploits, and scams, according to a press report citing a study by McAfee. The study of 265 top-level domains, dubbed "Mapping the Mal Web", revealed large differences in safety from one domain to another. The worst haven for malware belonged to the tiny Pacific island of Tokelau (.tk), where 10.1% of web sites contained "dodgy" content. The most risky large country domains were Romania (.ro with 5.6% risky sites) and Russia (.ru with 4.5% risky sites). These East European country domains were the most likely to host exploit or "drive-by-download" sites run by hackers.
The survey - which aims to provide a guidebook of the net's most dangerous top level domains - also looked at generic top level domains. It found that .info is the riskiest generic domain, with 7.5% of its sites rated as risky, followed by .com with a 5.5% population of dodgy sites.
Some web activities, like registering at a site or downloading a file, are significantly more risky when done at certain domains. For example, giving an email address to a random .info domain results in a 73.2% chance of receiving spam, McAfee reports.
Data from the study suggests that low or no cost domain registration, coupled with minimal domain oversight, leads to the higher levels of risk found at some top-level domains. For example, one reason the .biz domain may be preferred by spammers is because .biz domains are available for immediate use, rather than after a typical 24-hour waiting period - a distinct advantage in attempts to circumvent anti-spam services and blacklists.
(The Register, 12MAR07)
Last Modified: Friday, 23-Mar-2007 18:05:49 EST