[stats] us dirtiest spammer, china up there with malware

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Sophos 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.

The United States also led the globe in hosting malware, reported Sophos; its servers accounted for 34.2% of all Web-based malicious code. China again held second place, with 31%.

"Thirty percent of the malware written during 2006 came from China," says O'Brien. "Most of it was designed to steal logons and passwords related to online games." When asked why Chinese malware targets online gaming rather than, say, bank accounts, O'Brien says games "seem to have more of a cultural significance than strictly finance. It's like an American hacking MySpace."

Brazil, meanwhile, accounted for 14.2% of the world's malicious code, and consisted mainly of Trojan horses that targeted online banking services. Russia, Sweden, and Ukraine came in third through fifth by producing 4.1%, 3.8%, and 3.4% of all malware studied by Sophos' forensics engineers.

But percentages don't tell the whole story. "Russia was responsible for some of the more malicious malware," says O'Brien. "In Russia, [hacking] is primarily an organized crime activity."

One of the few bright spots in 2006, says O'Brien, was the dramatic decrease in infected e-mail, messages that contain a malicious Trojan, worm, or virus payload. During 2005, one in 44 messages were infected (2.2%); last year, only one in 337 messages carried a malicious payload (0.3%).