Backbone has been devoting a fair bit of ink lately to the problems of botnets and the threat posed by Web sites which can infect a computer that simply visits the site; at one time, infection occurred when users clicked a link or downloaded an application, but now a visitor can be hit with malware almost immediately.

Back in March, we reported a scary stat from Websense: the number of infected but otherwise legitimate Web sites has surpassed the number of sites created to infect you. That means you can't really trust any sites. That was backed up by our "I, botnet" article which warned that "Last summer, thousands of mainstream Web sites were hacked and made to surreptitiously point to a server hosting a malware kit called MPACK. Machines visiting the legitimate sites consequently touched the MPACK software, which scanned for vulnerabilities and infected them, dragging them down into the botnet.

And in our upcoming July issue (which will be at www.backbonemag.com/Magazine/Latest_Issue after the second week of July) we present advice on how to avoid becoming infected or to help clean a system already compromised.

And now a new report from McAfee puts geographic specifics on this dire situation. According to the company, the .hk domain for Hong Kong has jumped 28 places as the most dangerous place to surf and search on the Web. The full report, "Mapping the Mal Web Revisited," is available online. [www.mcafee.com/advice]

McAfee said 19.2% of all Web sites ending in the .hk domain pose a security threat. China (.cn) is second with more than 11%. On the other side of the fence, Finland (.fi) replaced Ireland (.is) as the safest destination, with 0.05%, followed by Japan (.jp).

As for generic domains, 11.8% of all sites ending in .info posed a threat, while government Web sites (.gov) are the safest.

Also from the McAfee report:
- the chance of downloading spyware, adware, viruses or other unwanted software from surfing the Web increased 41.5% over 2007
- sites which offer infected downloads such as ringtones and screen savers jumped over the last year from 3.3% to 4.7%
- Tokelau (.tk) and Samoa (.ws) became notably safer

It's getting increasingly scary out there on the Internet. None of us are going to stop surfing, but it's worth investigating a multi-tiered defense shield comprised of antivirus and firewall programs, Web content filtering and a good dose of caution.

Peter Wolchak