If you go down StopBadware.org’s top ten most malware infected network list, you’ll notice a pattern: the first four are Chinese. While the critic may find that unsurprising, number five on the list, Google, Inc., is worth a double take.
Google isn’t just one of the founders of StopBadware.org, it’s also a member. The company, in a weird twist, is also its own target. Google has its free blogging service Blogger to thank for all that junk gumming up its own network. Out of over 200,000 websites discovered to be infected, Blogger returned 4,261 infections.
Google suggested that number is actually a bit low. The company says “the bad guys” are constantly creating blogs that link to or otherwise distribute some kind of malware, and Google detects and deletes them on a daily basis. “The 4,261 figure represents some of the malware blogs we delete over a 30 day period,” said a Google representative, who also downplayed the overall impact of these temporary blogs when compared to sites with millions of visitors.
Malware distributors are likely encouraged not only by Blogger’s free model, but also by the sheer amount of traffic Google itself. Indeed, the most popular takes the most hits. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was always a much more targeted browser than ones with less market share.
Google was just one of three American-based networks to make the top ten list. The others were SoftLayer and ThePlanet, at numbers seven and eight. American networks accounted for 21 percent of the malware detected. One European network made the top ten: France’s iNetwork.
But it was China who really took the gold in the malware event. Six of the top ten networks were Chinese, and Chinese networks contributed fifty-two percent of the 200,000 infected websites.
Making StopBadware’s Top Ten list isn’t the worst that could happen, though. Maxim Weinstein, manager of StopBadware.org, said the annual report isn’t about assigning blame, but to help things improve. Last year’s winner, iPowerWeb, was able to clean up its network significantly. With help from StopBadware and Google, Weinstein says iPowerWeb didn’t even make the top 250 this year.
