Malware hosting surprise for Dutch

Fourth on badness list despite EU praise.

A recent report on sources of malware from Sophos puts the usual suspects at the top of the list; between them, the top three, the US, China and the Russian Federation, are home to over 70% of viruses, trojans and other nasties hosted online. Fourth place however goes to an unlikely candidate - the Netherlands, recently singled out for praise in a report on spam reduction by the European Commission.

The Dutch anti-spam agency OPTA has had considerable success in reducing local spam, recording a drop of 85% since they began fighting the problem. However, the hosting of malware, and also cracker and hacker sites, remains a serious problem for the country, with a strong freedom-of-speech ethos thought to be at the heart of the issue.

'The 4.7% of malware sites found in the Netherlands pales into insignificance compared to the US and Chinese figures, both over 30%,' said John Hawes, Technical Consultant at Virus Bulletin. 'It would be good to see some concerted action by the Dutch to combat the proliferation of malware on the web, if just as a signal to the real bad guys that something can, and should be done about this.'

The US and China also top Sophos' 'Dirty Dozen' spamming nations, with over 37% of spam coming from the two superpowers - the Dutch do not figure at all in the list, which is dominated instead by other European nations. China is also reckoned to produce around 30% of malware written, of which a sizeable proportion is targeted at online gamers.

Analysis of the figures from Sophos is here, with the full report downloadable (after filling in a form) here.

24 January 2007

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