Australia is fourth top malicious domain host

Australia is the fourth worst offender in terms of the hosting of malicious domains, according to new research from Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42.

The report found that Australia is well ahead of both Russia and China for hosting bad sights, and the number of malicious sites.

Australia and the Netherlands were also the only two countries to show an increase in the number of malicious domains they host between April and June. Most countries have seen a decline, with China in particular seeing a massive decrease as the nation dropped from number two to number seven on the top 10 list.

Australia was also number six on the list of top countries hosting exploit kits. But the KaiXin kit that has been highly prevalent in the APAC region was not detected at all in the nation.

Popular exploit kits that were found in Australia include Grandsoft, Sundown and Rig, which are also prevalent in the US, Russia and the Netherlands.

The US is by far the top host of exploit kits, with more than twice as many found in the nation as in second-ranked Russia. The US is also the world’s top host of malicious domains.

Unit 42 Principal Researcher Vicky Ray said the vulnerabilities most exploited during the quarter included a number of very old vulnerabilities, reinforcing the importance of vigilant software updates.

“We saw one very old vulnerability, which we’ve known about for almost a decade, move to number four on the list of vulnerabilities exploited this quarter,” he said.

“Another, similarly ancient vulnerability cracked the top five this quarter, indicating that companies aren’t being vigilant when it comes to updates and patches. Failing to patch for these known vulnerabilities can leave companies open to attacks.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Denys Rudyi

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