The nation leads others in malicious URLs, IP and phishing websites.
Contrary to popular understanding, a bulk of the cyber attacks on U.S. businesses continue to originate from inside the state rather than outside it.

The report noted, over 75 percent of all phishing sites are hosted on servers in the nation.

The Webroot report is founded on an evaluation of information collected by the BrightCloud risk intelligence service of the firm. It revealed that the infrastructure for hosting and spreading it as well as malware, is growing drastically quickly.

One reason why so many malicious URLs can be found in the U.S. could just be that malicious attackers understand that URLs in high risk states are mechanically blocked by geo-filtering services, he said.

“An example of this type of service is an enterprise network that’s configured to reject all connection efforts involving URLs from a high risk state,” Webroot said in its report. “This underscores the value of having URL standing data independent of categorization, as filtering only by IPs might not be enough to keep networks and users risk-free,” the firm noted.

The data on assault sources isn’t the sole surprise in the Webroot report. What it also revealed is that technology firms are targeted a lot more frequently in phishing attacks than financial services firms. On average there were almost 9,000 phishing efforts found per technology company in 2014 compared to only 900 efforts for financial services firms.

The very best five firms by phishing websites in 2014 impersonated were Facebook Google, Yahoo, Apple and Dropbox. The reason phishers have gravitated towards such websites is quite straightforward, Malloy says.

“The qualifications to these websites are generally the master password to a lot of other programs,” Malloy said. Phishers often can unlock numerous other reports also by getting access to the usernames and passwords to these websites, he said.

Somewhat astonishingly, Webroot research also revealed that Internet users are under growing siege from various malware threats. In Dec 2014, the organization noted an over 50 percent increase in phishing action most likely as an outcome of the holidays. The firm decided the typical Internet user has a 30 percent probability that she or he will fall victim to a phishing attack calling for a zero-day threat for which no remediation is accessible.

The variety of cellular uses that were trustworthy dropped to 28 percent in 2014 from 52 percent of all uses in 2013. About 50 percent were funny or somewhat trustworthy while the remaineder were unwanted or malicious. The data suggests that IP address blacklists should be upgraded continuously to stay informed about new attacks and attackers and that risks are exceptionally dynamic in nature, Webroot said.

In case the trend continues, the past two years will account for almost half of all malware since security investigators began tacking the rear in the late 1980s found, Malloy said.