Malware Report By Country Yields Suprising Results

(Jeff Roberts @ Gigaom) Google’s Transparency Report is a document that shines light on threats to the internet, including copyright takedowns and government surveillance requests. On Tuesday, the search giant announced a new section that highlights sources of malware and phishing attacks.

According to a company blog post, the information is an outgrowth of Google’s “safe browsing” program which warns consumers when they visit a site that appears to be infected with malware. The site details specific incidents but also shows overall trends. These include the pleasant surprise that, unlike government surveillance, malware does not appear to be on the rise. Here’s a screenshot:

The coolest part of the report may be a heat map that lets a user mouse over countries to view the rate of suspicious sites. The United States scores very well; a Google scan of Autonomous Systems turned up a malware rate of only 2%.

The highest rate of malware, however, doesn’t belong to obvious suspects like Russia or Ukraine (8% each), but instead India (15%) and many Latin American countries like Mexico (12%) and Chile (11%). Central Europe also had high malware rates, in particular Hungary (15%) and Bosnia (16%). Google cautions that this data is “not comprehensive and is best viewed as an indicator of the global malware problem.”

To see the full report: Click Here!