Most Dangerous Domains to Navigate are .hk, .cn and .info

Posted in Security | June 4th, 2008

Most of the internet users think that all domain names are equal but this is not the case. Antivirus vendor McAfee released a report on Wednesday, June 04, 2008. McAfee said that hk" (Hong Kong), ".cn" (China) and ".info" (information) domains are most dangerous to navigate. Of all ".hk" sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of ".cn" sites and 11.7 percent of ".info" sites that way. A little more than 5 percent of the sites under the ".com" domain — the worlds most popular — were identified as dangerous.

Malware purveyors and spammers choose their top-level domain registrations based in part on where it is difficult to get a domain name shut down, Stagg said.

There are "huge, huge numbers of organized crime Web sites and porn Web sites are registered with .cn domains, but most of them are not hosted in China,"

Purveyors of malware and spam choose top-level domains in part based on how difficult it is to shut those domains down. For example, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation can ask Network Solutions to close a .com domain, hosted in the U.S., within days, Stagg said, whereas it would have no jurisdiction with foreign domain registrars.

Source: Startribune and PC World