AVG : The USA hosts 44% of all malicious sites

AVG appears to have broken conventional wisdom by claiming that more then 40% of the worlds malicious web sites are hosted in the USA.

Security software company Sophos regularly points their finger at the USA as the main relay of the worlds spam. This has lead to numerous computers becoming infected, leading to their addition to a select number of botnets. For AVG Technologies, most of the web’s malicious sites, in their view 44%, are situated in the United States. With "only" 5%, Germany and China round out the top three places.

To arrive at this conclusion, the editor has analysed feedback to their LinkScanner protection software which has protected users from online threats over the last six months. LinkScanner is integrated into the AVG security suite, but a free and autonomous version also exists.According to AVG’s figures, LinkScanner is also used by 110 million users.

Technical director at AVG Technologies, Karel Obluk declares that they have destroyed "the myth that malicious software is hosted in countries where cybercrime legislation is lax". Continuing, he adds that "malicious content has more chance of appearing on a server in the USA then in Asia or Eastern Europe". It hasn’t been established though whether the cybercriminals exploiting these servers are also located mainly in the USA.