Computer Crime
Posted on 6 December 2009 by Stenberg-Tendys W.L. in Society
Piracy and hi-jacking continue in its many various forms, from piracy on the high seas to hi-jacking in the air. The virtual world of Cyber Space is an exact replica of what we see in the physical world, including piracy and hi-jacking.
As part of their third annual Mapping the Mal Web report, Anti virus software developers have analyzed millions of generic and country domains. The report showed that the tropical island nation of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific and Japan are two of the five most secure countries, which is great news for Vanuatu IT based businesses. Other safe countries are Ireland, Croatia, Catalan, Luxembourg, South Africa and Switzerland.
Computer users in Samoa are now being warned their country has one of the riskiest web domains in the world. Philippines, the Former Soviet Union, Russia and Singapore top the list in the riskiest domains.
McAfee’s Director of web security research, Paula Greve, says Samoa’s domain, dot ws, ranks third after Cameroon and China. “What we’re seeing with Samoa was a huge increase in risky activities, especially with regard to phishing and malicious download activity.”
Samoa has had a 400% increase in risk over the last year, with nearly 18% of its sites exposed to cyber crimes, such as identity theft known as phishing.
Cameroon (.cm) has a whopping 36.7% of domains posing a security risk. Romania (.ro) came in with 21% and China (.cn) 18.6%.
Last year Hong Kong (.hk) was the most risky domain to surf. After the Hong Kong Registrars took appropriate actions, their efforts paid off, with just 1.1% this year. They have now dropped to 34th place.
The goal of McAfees is to encourage users to become better educated and more aware of risky sites, as well as celebrate the many safer domains. Web owners are encouraged to register their site only at one of the many safe domains that are available.
McAfees report demonstrates that potential online threats are constantly changing. Cybercriminals move their malicious activities to regions where registering sites is cheap and convenient and where they are least likely to be caught. “Through awareness and intelligent technology, we’re aiming to make the web a lot less risky,” says Grieve.
Overall, looking at 27 million Web sites and 104 top-level domains, McAfee found that only 1.5 million sites, or 5.8%, were risky. Surfing the web is safer than walking on most large city streets.
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