SEOUL, KOREA - Korea was ranked as the world's third-largest source country for malicious codes. According to Microsoft's security intelligence report for the second half of 2012, 18 out of 1,000 Korean websites turned out to be abused as a source of malicious codes, standing behind Brazil with 32 and China with 25. The figure for Korea is higher than Russia's 16 and India's 13.
In particular, Korea saw the number of such websites rise to 17.88 in the fourth quarter of last year from 14.5 in the third quarter of 2012. This is higher than the world's average of 9.46 for the third quarter and 10.85 for the fourth quarter.
In contrast, the share of phishing sites in Korean websites stood at 3.92 per 1,000 sites, remaining lower than the world's average. The drive-by download, or the unintended download of computer software from the Internet, for Korea stood at 0.29 per 1,000 URLs.
The report added that 24 percent of the computers worldwide are not protected well enough as they do not use real-time security programs or use obsolete security programs.
