ANTenna Blog -- Security

The malware map, like malware itself, keeps changing. McAfee's latest look at where the bad things grow shows a surge in .hk-based threats, moving the Hong Kong extension to the top of the list.

What a difference a year makes: according to McAfee, .hk domains are the world's most dangerous sites to surf, earning Hong Kong a whopping 28 jump in problem prominence.

The finding, along with a global look at where else the threats reside, is in the security company's "Mapping The Mal Web Revisited" report, its second such look at the global threat environment.

This year's top 5 most dangerous domains:

Hong Kong (.hk)

PR of China (.cn)

Philippines (.ph)

Romania (.ro)

Russia (.ru)

The five safest, from McAfee's perspective:

Finland (.fi)

Japan (.jp)

Norway (.no)

Slovenia (.si)

Colombia (.co)

McAfee based its rankings on the percentage of a domain's sites containing risks. The anti-virus firm found that close to twenty percent of .hk sites either held viruses or other malware, or produced spam; pop-up ad generation was also included as measurement factor. Only half of one percent of .fi sites boasted (as it were) negatives.

Realworld Hong Kong officials, by the way, were quick to note that a .hk in a url doesn't mean the domain's host computer is actually located in Hong Kong.

Last year's Mapping The Mal Web is here.