The former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics gained some Internet status in 1990 by being awarded its own top-level domain. A year later, the USSR was no more, but its domain lived on—to the delight of cybercriminals.
Over the last two years, the USSR’s domain—.su—has seen a spurt in registrations—many of them by miscreants pushing scams and malware, according to cyber-security company Group IB.
In 2011, Group IB said, the number of malicious websites hosted by the SU domain doubled from the previous year. In 2012, it doubled again, vaulting over a number of malicious sites hosted by another favorite domain of cybercriminals, .ru, as well as its Cyrillic counterpart.
Sites in the .su domain can be particularly harmful because they may distribute malware, typically Trojan sites, which are designed to pilfer personal information used for identity theft and to compromise bank accounts from the machines they infect.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2040485/cybercriminals-go-back-to-the-ussr.html#tk.rss_all
No comments:
Post a Comment