Blogs

The Q2 Top 50 Bad Hosts & Networks report encompasses analysis on all 38,030 currently advertised and commercial hosts (ASNs), focusing on the 50 worst offenders. HostExploit is pleased to announce that for the first time, and in collaboration with Group iB, the report is published in English and Russian with both versions available as free downloads. In addition, registration is no longer required to view the public reports.

Download the English report (PDF) here.

Download the Russian report (PDF) here.

Download the Russian report (PDF) here from Group iB.

In a quarter dominated by press stories from self-publicizing hackers such as Anonymous and LulzSec, matched with DDoS attacks and data exfiltration by others, it is easy to overlook the more widespread problems – as an example, there were around 350,000 website defacement hacks in this quarter and 1.5 million in 2010. Additionally, there are currently 800,000 plus web sites hosting malicious exploits and badware.

HostExploit is pleased to present the Q1 2011 report on the Top 50 Bad Hosts and Networks, taking a look at recent notable events such as the LizaMoon SQL attacks and the takedown of the Rustock botnet.

Download the two page summary (PDF) here and the full report (PDF) here.

In addition to HostExploit’s regular quarterly analysis of the world’s worst hosts for malicious activity – including spam, botnets, badware, phishing attacks and infections – the report looks at the fallout of major hacks and intrusions in the industry and what it means for the hosts themselves. Other pertinent topics such as Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), mobile malware and 32-bit ASNs are discussed.

Last July the story of Jessi ‘Slaughter’ became one of the hottest subjects on social networking and video sharing websites, but for many of the wrong reasons. With Safer Internet Day just recently, this event serves as an excellent example to children (and others!) of how not to behave online. I decided to take a closer look at the Jessi Slaughter incident.

It’s not that easy to get to grips with all the facts around the story which is surrounded by confusion and rumors. For me, that is lesson number one. Things can so easily become distorted on the ‘net’ especially when many people get involved giving their own views and comments. What is clear though is that letting a child loose on the Internet can lead to all sorts of dangers as this 11-year-old girl found out. The Internet can make you famous but it can also make you a victim. It can ruin not only your life but of those around you, your family and your friends.

We are pleased to report that the #1 Bad Host and crime server from last quarter's report - AS29106 VolgaHost, has been taken off-line, as from January 17th 2011.

This has occurred on the back of the recent de-peering of several major bulletproof hosts - so called for their support of known centers of cybercrime.

VolgaHost is well known to HostExploit. It topped our ranking of ‘Bad Hosts’ for the 4th quarter of 2010, having been ranked #3 in the two previous quarters.

As the following chart shows, it earned its placing due to the number of botnet Command & Control (C&C) servers it was hosting, as well as significant levels of malicious URLs, Zeus and exploit servers:

Click image to view full size.

The HostExploit (HE) series on worldwide cybercriminal activities continues in the Q4 2010 Report on the ‘Top 50 Bad Hosts and Networks’. The emphasis this quarter is on the repeat offending of some hosting providers.

Download the two page summary (PDF) here and the full report here.

VolgaHost AS29106 is no stranger to the Top 50 reports, having been in the top 10 for the entire 6 months prior to this quarter. And yet the effective badness levels have continued to rise to now take the #1 rank. Particularly prevalent on VolgaHost are Zeus servers and infected web sites.