China Remains World's Top Malware Hosting Country

Malware hosted on websites more and more focuses on China, Russia and the U.S. While these three countries now host more than 85% of the world's websites that are infected with malware, China has cemented its position as leading malware hosting country.

According to Sophos, 55.2% of all malware-infected websites are located in China. This number represents a substantial increase over the 35.2% share Sophos published for the first quarter of this year. Meanwhile, the U.S. Is showing a clear downward trend in this ranking: Sophos estimates the U.S. Share to be at 19.7%, which is down from 32.3% in the first quarter. Russia is showing big swings in its share from month to month and is currently estimated at 11.4%, up from 4.6% in Q1.

Sophos said that webpages hosted in China continue to be plagued by Mal/Iframe malware.

"The U.S., China and Russia continue to top the monthly chart, accounting for more than 85 percent of all infected webpages world-wide," said Mike Haro, senior security analyst at Sophos. "The additional countries included in this month's top 10 are comprised of four new entries (Turkey, UK, Poland, France), signifying that the rise of malware-infected webpages is a global problem."