Five ISPs hosting a third of malware, says study
StopBadware survey finds small group of ISPs most to blame.
In a recent study of almost 50,000 sites known to be hosting malware, five ISPs have been identified as repeat
offenders, between them hosting over 17,000 infected pages.
The study, carried out by StopBadware.org, the international group of malware fighters founded in
collaboration between Oxford and Harvard universities, examined sites submitted to StopBadware.org's clearing
system by a wide range of trusted data providers, and recorded which ISP was hosting the malicious sites.
Arizona-based iPowerWeb was found to be the worst offender, with 10,834 pages carrying malware hosted by
its servers, while four others, including one in China, were found to be serving up between 786 and 2,513 pages each.
It is thought that the majority of the sites carrying the malicious code were legitimate sites which had been
hacked thanks to poor security, weak passwords or software vulnerabilities, and all ISPs are encouraged to
implement better policies regarding the detection and removal of malicious software from their servers.
Full details of the study can be found at StopBadware.org,
here.
09 May 2007
Tags:
isp, malware, research, stopbadware.
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