U.S. Remains Dirtiest Spammer, But China Makes More Malware

From InformationWeek:

The United States again led the world as a spam producing, malware hosting country last year, a security vendor said Monday, but China took top dishonor as the nation that generated the most malicious code in 2006.

Sophos, which published its annual threat roundup Monday, said U.S.-based computers were responsible for sending 22% of the year’s spam, with China second at 15.9%, and South Korea third at 7.4%. Nine out of every 10 spam messages sent worldwide were sent from so-called “zombies,” computers that were hijacked and sent messages without their owners’ knowledge.

“On a per-capita basis, the U.S. has a disproportionate number of PCs, and a disproportionate number of them are unprotected,” says Ron O’Brien, senior security analyst for Sophos.

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