A new report has canvassed more than 1.5 million malware infections in the United States to reveal interesting takeaways from the first half of 2017.
New Hampshire is the state with the highest malware infections in the United States, at a staggering 201% higher infection rate than the national average according to a new report released by Enigma Software Group (ESG), a software firm that makes anti-malware programs.
The insights taken from the research are still unclear as the highest-infected regions geographically includes a mix of states from the East and West costs, higher and lower income areas and even densely and sparsely populated states.
Researchers looked at various forms of malware including ransomware, adware, rogue anti-spyware and more. These rogue anti-spyware programs, purporting to look like legitimate software, promised to remove infections. However, they were simply taking the unsuspecting user’s money without actually providing any protection.
The complete list of the ten states with the highest malware rates and their percentages higher than the national average reads:
New Hampshire (201%)
Colorado (143%)
Virginia (80%)
New Jersey (64%)
Oregon (25%)
New York (24%)
Montana (24%)
Missouri (23%)
Arizona (18%)
Maine (17%)
ESG spokesperson Ryan Gerding stated:
It’s hard to tell exactly why some states have higher infection rates than others. In the top five alone, you’ve got east coast and west coast states, highly populated states and sparsely populated ones. Regardless of where you live, it’s always important to stay vigilant for infections all the time.
On a city by city basis, Orlando is the most malware-ridden city, followed by Denver and St.Louis. Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi had the lowest infection rates through the first half of 2017.
Overall, infections in June 2017 were down 31% compared to infections in January. Researchers believe that’s predominantly due to the new updates pushed by Microsoft to Windows users in the aftermath of the unprecedented global ransomware menace – WannaCry.
Image credit: Pixabay.
