Last year, SWITCH (operator for the ccTLD's .CH and .LI) fought malware on more than 1500 Swiss websites. Ninety-four percent of these were cleaned up – 81 percent within a single day. The registry for .ch and .li domain names sees this as highly positive and is continuing with its firm stand against malware in 2012. In 2011, SWITCH contacted the holders and operators of 1547 websites that were spreading malware. The aim was to clean up manipulated .ch and .li websites as rapidly as possible so that the malware could not spread any further. More websites cleaned up faster Malware takes in malicious software, such as viruses, worms, Trojans or spyware. If websites are infected by malware, they can spread this malware themselves, unnoticed by operators and visitors. It is frequently enough to simply call up the manipulated website. In 2011, SWITCH contacted the holders and operators of manipulated websites in 1547 cases (see graphic). Eighty-one percent of the websites were cleaned up by the operators within a single working day, 13 percent were blocked by way of a precaution and then cleaned up. If no solution has been found after a domain name has been blocked for five days, it must be unblocked again. "Our excellent cooperation with the hosting providers has made a key contribution towards ensuring that scarcely any websites now have to be unblocked without having been cleaned up", says Marco D’Alessandro, media spokesman at SWITCH. Over the period from the first quarter to the fourth quarter of 2011, it proved possible to reduce the percentage of non-cleaned websites from 12 percent (56 websites) to less than one percent. Read the rest here.
