NOW READ THIS
("Security Advisory")
Submitted by: Bill Hickey
NCVA List Master
NRT-0332 US Systems Continue to Out-Spam Other Countries:
A quarterly report released Friday by Sophos indicated that the United States remains
the world's most prolific spammer by a wide margin, according to a press article citing
the report. The Sophos study found US entities to be responsible for 28.4% of all
spam. South Korea was second (5.2%), followed by China (4.9%), Russia (4.4%) and Brazil
(3.7%). "This level of activity can't be attributed solely to the slick operations of a
few cash-hungry criminals. The problem is there are thousands of spammers using many
thousands of compromised zombie computers in the US," said Carole Theriault, senior
security consultant at Sophos. "The only way we're going to reduce the problem is if
US authorities invest a lot more in educating computer users of the dangers, while
ensuring ISPs step up their monitoring efforts to identify these compromised machines
as early as possible," assessed Theriault.
Several of the top spam proliferators changed position in the past quarter, and the US
percentage jumped. The July edition of this Sophos report (covering April to June 2007)
indicated that the US accounted for 19.6% of golbal spam, followed by China (8.4%), South
Korea (6.5%), Poland (4.8%), Germany (4.2%), Brazil (4.1%), France (3.3%), and Russia
(3.1%).
(CNET News.com 26OCT07 // www.computerworld.com.au 19OCT07)