Chinese security company shares huge malware database
A Chinese company that has created a massive database of malware found on Chinese Web sites has opened up its 
information to other security organizations.
Beijing-based KnownSec gathered the viruses and other information with a crawler that scans nearly 2 million Chinese Web sites each day.
Zhao Wei, the CEO of KnownSec, said in an interview in Beijing. “I plan to give a presentation on the subject at the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) security conference in Kyoto, Japan. The database covers more Chinese Web sites and provides more up-to-date information about their security than any other, Zhao said in the interview. China produces the majority of the world’s malware” he said.
The database stores tens of thousands of viruses found distributed by websites. A history for each site in the database is able to list the dates of malware infections, the strings of malicious code placed on the sites and which antivirus products defend viewers against their attacks.
KnownSec has made claim to have found more than 100 Trojan downloader files that have never been seen before, each day. Each of those can direct a victim’s PC to download up to ten viruses.
“Our database also has a list of Web sites that are currently compromised. Only about half of the newly infected sites KnownSec finds each day are also listed by Google as dangerous” said Zhao.
According to Zhao, “Security companies and national computer emergency response teams can request access to the KnownSec database. Security companies could use the information to shield users of their antivirus programs against new malware threats. We cannot realize the role of this data by just keeping it,” he said.
Separately, security vendor McAfee has also seen a rise in malware from China in recent months.
Prabhat Singh, McAfee’s senior director of Avert operations in the Asia Pacific, said in an interview: “The amount of malware Chinese Internet users reported to McAfee in the last six months was nearly 80% the amount reported in all of 2008, Singh said. At that growth rate, the amount of malware seen in China this year could double over last year. Password-stealing Trojans were the dominant type of malware in China in the first quarter this year, said Singh. Many specifically try to steal account passwords for online games, which are extremely popular in China, he said. An attacker can strip a game account of equipment like weapons and armor and sell them for cash.”
One can rest assured that there will always be a security option to combat all malciious content on the ent!
