Amazon Biggest Malware-Hosting Provider, Says Report

A report from security firm Solutionary claims that malware writers are using the big cloud hosting platforms to quickly and effectively serve malware to oblivious internet users, and Amazon web services are the biggest malware server in the world along with GoDaddy and Google. The malware writers are aware that a trusted provider like Amazon will allow them to bypass detection and geographic blacklisting.

Solutionary discovered that hackers compromise legitimate sites for nefarious purposes, as well as buying and hosting their own sites for the same reasons legitimate publishers use them. “Malware and, more specifically, its distributors are utilising the technologies and services that make processes, application deployment and website creation easier. Now we have to maintain our focus not only on the most dangerous parts of the Web but also on the parts we expect to be more trustworthy," said Rob Kraus, Solutionary's director of research for the security engineering research team.

Cloud providers have stringent security policies against this kind of malicious activity, and remove offenders as soon as they are discovered on their systems. However, the sheer number of websites and services hosted on their cloud systems make that discovery job very difficult. Owing to the ease of website creation, low cost and speed of deployment, malware producers are able to create and remove malware serving websites quickly, easily and cost effectively. This allows them to infect millions of computers and vast numbers of enterprise systems.

The report also showed that in the last three months of 2013, the US was the world’s number one malware hosting nation with 44 per cent of the global share of malware, five times larger than Germany which was responsible for 9 per cent of the malware detected by the company’s security research team and the second leading malware hosting nation. Amazon was the top malware-hosting provider with a 16 per cent share, with GoDaddy ranking second with a 14 per cent share.