US tops dirty dozen spammers

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 25 July 2006 18:12

Business IT - Security

The US and China are vying for the title as the world's largest spamming nation, according to a new report.

The latest figures from IT security firm Sophos, show that between them the US and China originated not that much less than half of all the world's spam over the second quarter of 2006.

Experts at Sophos scanned all spam messages received in the company's global network of spam traps, and have revealed that for the first time in more than two years, the United States has failed to make inroads into its spam-relaying problem.

The US remains stuck at the top of the chart and is the source of 23.2% of the world's spam.  Its closest rivals are China and South Korea, although both of these nations have managed to improve since Q1 2006.

The vast majority of this spam is relayed by 'zombies', also known as botnet computers, hijacked by Trojan horses, worms and viruses under the control of hackers.

Interestingly, Sophos notes that even the Vatican has emerged as an unwitting relay source of spam traffic.

The top twelve spam relaying countries are as follows:

April to June 2006

  1. United States               23.2%
  2. China (inc. Hong Kong)      20.0%
  3. S Korea                      7.5%
  4. France                       5.2%
  5. Spain                        4.8%
  6. Poland                       3.6%
  7. Brazil                       3.1%
  8. Italy                        3.0%  new entry
  9. Germany                      2.5%
 10. United Kingdom               1.8%
 11. Taiwan                       1.7%
 12. Japan                        1.6%