Riskiest domains

[[R_H]]

Cameroon revealed as web threat hotspot (BBC)

More than one third of African country Cameroon's websites pose a security risk to surfers according to a new report by security expert McAfee.

Web addresses for Cameroon end ".cm" - attracting careless web users who wrongly type ".com".
Fraudsters take advantage of spelling mistakes and typing errors to set up false sites that may look similar to those the surfer intended to visit.

But they can contain spyware, adware and malicious downloads instead. Last year's survey put Hong Kong (.hk) at the top of the riskiest domain names. However a clampdown on domain registration has made it safer in 2009. Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation Ltd, which supervises domain registration for .hk websites, said that asking for proof of identity was one measure which had led to a decline in suspicious applications.

So instead, those wishing to exploit web surfers turned their attention to common typing errors.
"The bad guys got good at exploiting bad typing skills," Shane Keats, senior research analyst at McAfee and co-author of the report, told BBC News.

He added that when looking for a host country in which to set up a fraudulent domain, scammers tend to look for three things: "low cost, ease of registration and lack of regulation".
McAfee surveyed 27 million websites for the report - of which 688,861 were sites hosted by Cameroon. 36.7% were found to be suspicious.
The safest domains surveyed were Japan (.jp), Ireland (.ie) and Croatia (.hr).

RISKIEST WEB DOMAINS 2009
1. Cameroon (.cm)
2. People's Republic of China (.cn)
3. Samoa (.ws)
4. Philippines (.ph)
5. Former Soviet Union (.su)

I honestly wouldn't have guessed that .hr would be one of the safest domains, nor did I know that there was a domain for the Former Soviet Union.

[White Haven]

...Why is .su even a domain? That's right on par with having .gn for GONDOR, they're both nations that don't exist.

[Marcus Aurelius]

...Why is .su even a domain? That's right on par with having .gn for GONDOR, they're both nations that don't exist.

Because it was created back when Soviet Union did exist. Domain names have been in use since early 1980s if I remember correctly and the country domains were first allocated around the same time. Wikipedia tells the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country-co ... vel_domain

su (the obsolete ISO 3166 code for Soviet Union): Assigned when the Soviet Union was still extant and SU was its assigned ISO 3166 code. The su managers stated in 2001 they will commence accepting new su registrations, but it is unclear whether this action is compatible with ICANN policy.

[Ypoknons]

What's scarier is that .cn is the second least safe. The government spends all their time protecting the people from pornography and troublemakers (to use their language), but doesn't even bother with malicious websites. It's not even that hard, just look at ".hk" - but of course, Hong Kong is relatively small and easy to manage. The rule of law counts for something too, I guess.

[White Haven]

China and Russia collectively make up the asshole of the internet. Now that doesn't necessarily translate into their own internal domains given how many extranational registrations go on, but it's certainly a good starting point. Really, the greatest downside of the idea of an open internet is that you have to let those two countries participate. I'm not advocating otherwise, of course, but it really makes me grit my teeth at times when I end up having to clean up Russian viruses, or I see another MMO currency farmer.