The world’s most heavily trafficked web domain, .COM, is now the riskiest, according to our fourth annual Mapping the Mal Web report released today. A staggering fifty-six percent of all risky sites end in .COM!
Researcher at our very own McAfee Labs analyzed more than 27 million websites to uncover which domains are the most dangerous. While .COM is the riskiest top-level domain, the riskiest country domain is Vietnam (.VN). Japan’s .JP ranks as the safest country domain for the second year in a row. The report also found that 6.2 percent of the 27 million websites analyzed pose a security risk – up from 5.8 percent last year.
Some of the other key takeaways of this report include:
* Overall Risk Is Rising
* Heavy Traffic Equals Big Risk For .COM
* .INFO Records Risky Information
* We Reveal The Worst Offenders
* The Risk Is Global
* Improvements Have Been Made
* Find Out Who Was Squeaky Clean
McAfee Labs used the McAfee® Global Threat Intelligence™ database to analyze content, behavior and reputation to determine riskiness in the Mapping the Mal Web report. The database correlates multiple types of threat data from more than 150 million sensors located in more than 120 countries. These sensors—individual computers, gateway network devices, endpoint software, in-the-cloud hosted services—come from consumers, small- and mid-sized businesses, enterprise customers, educational institutions and governmental agencies.
Businesses can help users navigate Web risks by adding Web reputation functionality to their other defenses. Operators of risky TLDs can learn from the report as well. It is possible to turn around a risky reputation or maintain a good one. For more information or to download the full report just go here.
[Update: The link pointed to last year’s report, this has been fixed]