Posted by Virus Bulletin on May 10, 2011
Country's IP addresses less likely to be scrutinized.
Security firm Websense has reported a significant increase in cybercrime originating in Canada.
Hitherto, Canada and malicious online activity were mainly linked through vast amounts of 'Canadian pharmacy' spam sent out to inboxes all over the world. However, malicious activity in the country - including the hosting of malware-serving and phishing websites as well as botnet command and control servers - has increased to such an extent that the country is now ranked sixth among the top cybercrime hosting countries.
Websense suspects one of the reasons for the cybercriminals' move to Canadian servers is that the country's IP addresses are less likely to be scrutinized compared to those from more traditional locations for malicious activity such as China and Eastern Europe. This will certainly put more pressure on the Canadian government to keep the country's IP space free from malicious activity.
More details can be found at the Websense Insights blog here.
The Canadian government has already taken an active stance in fighting cybercrime with the recent introduction of the country's anti-spam law - details of which were outlined by John Levine in the March issue of Virus Bulletin here (VB subscribers only).
Posted on 10 May 2011 by Virus Bulletin
