Slashdot Mirror


Cameroon the New Hotbed of Malware

garg0yle writes "According to McAfee, more than a third of Cameroon domains (TLD of .cm) are infested with viruses or other not-so-fun party treats. Given that it's very easy to mis-type .com as .cm, this puts the computers of a lot of fat-fingered typists in peril. Second place on the most-infested domains list goes to China (.cn), while Hong Kong (last year's 'winner') is now comfortably middle-of-the-pack."

3 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Mistype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    what about .co, .con, .om?

    .co is Colombia, .om is Oman, but .con doesn't exist.

    They don't seem to be high risk websites.

    What is "they" in that sentence, or did you mean "TLDs" instead of "websites"?

    I also wonder whether slashdot.og is infested with viruses.

    .og doesn't exist. You might want to consult a list of TLDs before you ask a bunch of "what about" questions. Or install a robust browser and try to load the url instead of just wondering about it.

  2. Re:Mistype by jrumney · · Score: 4, Informative

    It depends on the policies of the registrar for those top level domains. Some countries allow free for all registration of domain names, others restrict registration to local companies and citizens only. Also many country tlds require specific sub-domains such as .com.co, which reduce the usefulness of those domains for typo-squatters.

  3. Re:Mistype by grcumb · · Score: 4, Informative

    While I can believe that .cm is a mistype for .com, what about .co, .con, .om? They don't seem to be high risk websites. I also bet that .con is a more common mistype than .cm

    It hardly matters. What many of the press reports (including El Reg) seem to ignore is the second most risky TLD in the world: .com.

    I'll bet you dollars to donuts that, because of the size and popularity of the TLD, .com is significantly more of a threat to the average Internet user than .cm.

    And while we're at it, how about a link to the actual report? (warning: PDF)

    --
    Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.