“Two of the biggest threats online are malicious software (known as malware) that can take control of your computer, and phishing scams that try to trick you into sharing passwords or other private information,” the company said in a blog post. “So in 2006 we started a Safe Browsing program to find and flag suspect websites. This means that when you are surfing the web, we can now warn you when a site is unsafe. We're currently flagging up to 10,000 sites a day—and because we share this technology with other browsers there are about 1 billion users we can help keep safe.”
The report now shows how many people see Safe Browsing warnings each week, where malicious sites are hosted around the world, and how quickly websites become re-infected after their owners clean malware from their sites, among other tidbits.
The highest rate of malware belongs to India (15%) and a few Latin American countries like Mexico (12%) and Chile (11%). Central Europe also had high malware rates, in particular Hungary (15%) and Bosnia (16%). Obvious suspects like Russia or Ukraine came in at about half of that (8% each). The US was very low (2%) as was the UK (5%).
“Sharing this information also aligns well with our Transparency Report, which already gives information about government requests for user data, government requests to remove content and current disruptions to our services,” Google noted.
The expansion is timely: Trend Micro recently noted that 91% of targeted attacks involve spear-phishing emails, reinforcing the belief that spear phishing is a primary means by which APT attackers infiltrate target networks.