U.S. Hosts Over a Third of All Malware on the Internet

According to a report recently released by security vendor Sophos, the United States hosted over 37% of the total amount of malware on the web in 2009. The prevalence of malicious programs hosted in China has significantly reduced during the past year, positioning the country in the third place after Russia.

The top ten countries hosting malware on the web were revealed as part of the Sophos Security Threat Report 2010 (PDF). The statistics were compiled by analyzing data gathered between January and December 2009 and according to Graham Cluley, Sophos' senior technology consultant, the company found an average of 50,000 infected web pages every day.

The Sophos researchers concluded that during 2009, the U.S. hosted 37.4% of web-delivered malware. Russia came in second with 12.8%, while China was third with 11.2%. The list is completed by Peru (3.7%), Germany (2.6%), South Korea (2.4%), Poland (2.1%), Thailand (2.0%), Turkey (1.9%) and the United Kingdom (1.6%). The other countries in the world are hosting together 22.3% of all malware.

It's worth noting that the number of malicious files hosted in China has been on a descending trend for the past several years. The country was alone responsible for 51.4% of all malware on the web in 2008, according to Sophos. The percentage was almost reduced by half in 2008, with the final score being 27.7%. This year marked yet another significant drop in China-hosted malware and if the trend keeps going, the country might be out of top 3 by the end of 2010.

"Webmasters need to take much better care of their sites, ensuring that they are securely coded and properly patched against hackers injecting malicious software into their pages. Meanwhile, all computer users should be protected by a security solution that scans every webpage visited, and every link clicked on, to see if it could contain dangerous content," Graham Cluley advises.