In the first part of this series on the threat landscape in the European Union (EU) I examined threats found in the location with the highest malware infection rate, Romania. In the second part of the series I discussed malicious websites that are hosted in the EU. In this final article in the series I will look at the EU member states that have the lowest malware infection rates and share insights that other, more infected locations, might use to improve. The analysis in all three of these articles leverages data from the recently released Microsoft Security Intelligence Report volume 14 (SIRv14) and previous volumes and focuses on the fourth quarter of 2012 (4Q12).
Before looking at the locations with the lowest malware infection rates in the EU, first let’s look at how threat categories and families have been trending in the EU as a whole during the eighteen month period between the third quarter of 2011 (3Q11) and the fourth quarter of 2012 (4Q12). Figure 1 illustrates how threat categories have been trending in the EU. In my opinion, the most serious concern is the upward trend in exploit activity in the EU. Increased levels of drive-by download attacks and parser exploit attacks are major contributors to this trend. I discuss these attacks in more detail below. The other disconcerting trend is the consistently high levels of, and recent uptick in, detections of Miscellaneous Potentially Unwanted Software. Much of this looks to be related to increased usage of tools that enable software piracy. Read more
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