Cameroon the New Hotbed of Malware

garg0yle writes "According to McAfee, more than a third of Cameroon domains (TLD of .cm) are infested with viruses or other not-so-fun party treats. Given that it's very easy to mis-type .com as .cm, this puts the computers of a lot of fat-fingered typists in peril. Second place on the most-infested domains list goes to China (.cn), while Hong Kong (last year's 'winner') is now comfortably middle-of-the-pack."

.com default

[feedayeen]

Most modern browsers insert .com automatically if no top level domain exist in the URL.

Re:Mistype

[Anonymous Coward]

what about .co, .con, .om?

.co is Colombia, .om is Oman, but .con doesn't exist.

They don't seem to be high risk websites.

What is "they" in that sentence, or did you mean "TLDs" instead of "websites"?

I also wonder whether slashdot.og is infested with viruses.

.og doesn't exist. You might want to consult a list of TLDs before you ask a bunch of "what about" questions. Or install a robust browser and try to load the url instead of just wondering about it.

Re:Mistype

[jrumney]

It depends on the policies of the registrar for those top level domains. Some countries allow free for all registration of domain names, others restrict registration to local companies and citizens only. Also many country tlds require specific sub-domains such as .com.co, which reduce the usefulness of those domains for typo-squatters.

Re:Mistype

[Potor]

I can't remember the last time I typed "com".

Seriously - with ctrl+enter, who needs to?

Re:Mistype

[grcumb]

While I can believe that .cm is a mistype for .com, what about .co, .con, .om? They don't seem to be high risk websites. I also bet that .con is a more common mistype than .cm

It hardly matters. What many of the press reports (including El Reg) seem to ignore is the second most risky TLD in the world: .com.

I'll bet you dollars to donuts that, because of the size and popularity of the TLD, .com is significantly more of a threat to the average Internet user than .cm.

And while we're at it, how about a link to the actual report [mcafee.com]? (warning: PDF)

OpenDNS has an option to fix this

[robbak]

Opendns has an option to automatically 'correct' .cm requests to .com, which I always turn on. If Cameroon does not want people doing this, then it would have to police it's domain closely, instead of using it as a cash cow.

Cameroon is in Africa!

[mi]

I hereby denounce this article — and the pseudo-statistics in it — as racist!

Gebyy zl nff!..

To that I'll add

[Sycraft-fu]

That different nations treat their TLDs differently. Some sell them to anyone who wants one. You can register them as long as you are willing to pay whatever fee it is they ask. The .tv domain is one such domain. Others make the domains available, but only to people or organizations that meet certain requirements like citizenship. Canada (.ca) would be one like that. Any Canadian can have a .ca domain if they are willing to pay for it, but non-Canadians can't buy one. Still others only use their domain for government or internal functions. The .us domain was like that at one time. You could get it only as an entity like a county government or a high school or something (it is now open for registration). Finally some countries simply don't do anything with their TLD, it just isn't used at all and there's no way to get it.

So just because a TLD exists, doesn't mean it can be used for any given purposes.

Re:OpenDNS has an option to fix this

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenDNS also rewrites NXDOMAINS to host advertisements.

Why do people keep spamming this service like it doesn't suck?

Re:Mistype

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds you got one of those keyboards left by the W Bush admin for the next president.