America leads the way – in spam
p2pnet.net News:- America is not only the ‘top’ Dirty Dozen spam producing country, it’s also producing more malware than anywhere else, says a security company.
Britain’s Sophos says the top 12 spam-relaying countries in 2006 were:
1. United States – 22.0%
2. China (including Hong Kong) – 15.9%
3. South Korea – 7.4%
4. France – 5.4%
5. Spain – 5.1%
6. Poland – 4.5%
7. Brazil – 3.5%
8. Italy – 3.2%
9. Germany 0 3.0%
10. United Kingdom – 1.9%
11. Russia – 1.8%
12. Taiwan – 1.8%
Others – 24.4%
The Malware Top Ten looks like this:
1. United States – 34.2%
2. China – 31.0%
3. Russian Federation – 9.5%
4. Netherlands – 4.7%
5. Ukraine – 3.2%
6. France – 1.8%
7. Taiwan – 1.7%
8. Germany – 1.5%
9. Hong Kong – 1.0%
10. Korea – 0.9%
Others – 10.5%
Sophos says it believes up to 90% of all spam is now relayed from zombie computers, hijacked by Trojan horses, worms and viruses under the control of hackers, meaning they don’t have to be based in the same country as the computers being used to send the spam.
Meanwhile, the most prolific email threats during 2006 were the Mytob, Netsky, Sober and Zafi families of worms, which together accounted for more than 75% of all infected email, states the company, suggesting 2007 will probably see a significant shift away from the use of email security threats with crooks looking to exploit the continued global growth in web use, as well as user-defined web content.
Last year saw a decline in the use of traditional spyware in favor of multiple Trojan downloaders, Sophos says, going on:
“Statistics reveal that in January 2006 spyware accounted for 50.43% of all infected email, while 40.32% were emails linking to websites containing Trojan downloaders. By December 2006, the figures had been reversed, with the latter now accounting for 51.24%, and spyware-infected emails reduced to 41.87%. This trend is anticipated to continue into 2007 and beyond.”
On malware, 30% is written in China, most of it as Trojans used for gaining a backdoor into users’ computers, says the company also saying 17% of is designed specifically for stealing passwords from online gamers. “In contrast, malware authors based in Brazil are responsible for 14.2% of all malware, the majority of which is designed to steal information from online bankers.”
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