Understanding the Country-Level Security of Free Content Websites and their Hosting Infrastructure

This paper examines free content websites (FCWs) and premium content websites (PCWs) in different countries, comparing them to general websites. The focus is on the distribution of malicious websites and their correlation with the national cyber security index (NCSI), which measures a country’s cyber security maturity and its ability to deter the hosting of such malicious websites. By analyzing a dataset comprising 1,562 FCWs and PCWs, along with Alexa’s top million websites dataset sample, we discovered that a majority of the investigated websites are hosted in the United States. Interestingly, the United States has a relatively low NCSI, mainly due to a lower score in privacy policy development. Similar patterns were observed for other countries With varying NCSI criteria. Furthermore, we present the distribution of various categories of FCWs and PCWs across countries. We identify the top hosting countries for each category and provide the percentage of discovered malicious websites in those countries. Ultimately, the goal of this study is to identify regional vulnerabilities in hosting FCWs and guide policy improvements at the country level to mitigate potential cyber threats.