14 DAY TRIAL // According to a report from security giant McAfee, the Internet domain extension for Vietnam (.VN) is the riskiest country code TLD (ccTLD) in the world, and accounts for more malicious domains than clean ones.
McAfee publishes malicious top-level domain (TLD) trends once a year in a report called "Mapping the Mal Web."
The latest edition reveals a record level of malicious domains – 6.2% of the 27 million scanned by the company for its study.
It looks like .COM took back the title of most abused TLD from last year's winner, .CM (Cameroon), and carries an associated risk of 31.3%.
It is followed by .INFO with 30.7%, which has also seen a significant rise in risk level, considering that last year it was in fifth position.
With 29.4%, the third spot was taken by .VN, which is a new entrant in the top five and almost a "no fly" zone according to researchers. Three in five sites, or 58%, tracked by McAfee from this domain zone were malicious.
The TLDs for Cameroon (.CM) and Armenia (.AM) scored fourth and fifth with 22.2% and 12.1%, respectively.
The Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region had seven countries with TLDs in the top 20, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region had six, while the Americas only had one - .US, at position 14.
There are some TLDs, for which the situation has significantly improved compared to last year. These are .SG (Singapore), which jumped from 10th to 81st place and .VE (Venezuela), which dropped from 21st to 88th.
The safest ccTLD was .JP (Japan), with a negligible risk level of 0.08%. But overall, the safest TLDs were .TRAVEL and .EDU with 0.02% and 0.05%.
McAfee also notes, that even though they are not very popular at the moment, .SN (Senegal) and .IO (the Indian Ocean Territory) exhibit a large potential for abuse.