(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Security experts have called the US the “dirty man of the web world” in a report released by security firm Sophos (www.sophos.com), which identifies the US as the hosting location of the most infected sites.
According to Sophos’ Security Threat Report, more than a third of the world’s infected sites are hosted in the US, placing it ahead of Russia’s 12.8 percent share and China’s 11.2 percent.
The US remains the main hosting ground for malicious webpages. Although China and Russia continue to provide some strong competition, China’s share has dropped considerably from 27.7 percent in 2008 to 11.2 percent in 2009,” the report notes. “This continues a trend set in 2008, when China’s figure had dropped from 51.4 percent in 2007. The remainder of malicious pages are scattered all over the world, with Peru moving strongly up the list to fourth place with 3.7 percent.”
Sophos warns US hosts to clean up their act by taking better care to weed out malicious websites in their care. Also, webmasters should ensure that their sites are securely coded and properly patched against hackers who try to inject malicious software into their pages.
While it leads the world in infected sites and spam, this point is obscured by the fact that the US hosts the most sites, both safe and unsafe. According to Webhosting.info (webhosting.info), 11 out of 15 of the top hosting companies world wide are based in America.When viewed by continent, Asia leads in the distribution of spam, sending 34.9 percent of the total, and Europe is a strong second with 25 percent. Even South America surpassed North America as the third most likely place for spam hosting.
