MALICIOUS SOFTWARE / SOPHOS SECURITY THREAT REPORT

The malware top 10

VIVIAN YEO, ZDNET ASIA

Not only is it Asia's top producer of spam, China is now also host to the most URLs that contain malware.

According to Sophos' Security Threat Report 2007, last year China hosted 31 percent of the world's unique web sites that contain malicious code _ second only to the United States at 34.2 per cent.

Other Asian economies in the top 10 list include: Taiwan at seventh position with 1.7 per cent, Hong Kong at ninth position with 1 percent, and South Korea at 10th spot with 0.9 per cent.

According to Sophos, malware-infected web sites are on the rise, with some 5,000 new URLs carrying malicious code uncovered by SophosLabs on a daily basis.

Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos, pointed out that more enterprise users are accessing unregulated sites and downloading files via the web, making the Internet the ''easiest way for cybercriminals to gain entry into corporate networks.

''A great many businesses aren't geared up to gain insight into users' online behaviour, let alone control it, and it's vital that they now begin to examine ways to incorporate web security into their overall IT security strategy,'' Theriault said in a statement.

Sophos also indicated that 30 percent of all malware was written in China. Most of the malware identified were Trojan horses that attempted to create a backdoor into a user's PC. About 17 percent were designed to steal passwords from online gamers.

While web malware is on the rise, Sophos said that email threats were expected to decline in the year ahead.

Bangkok Post
Wednesday January 31, 2007