United States Worst for Malware Hosting and Spam-Relaying, Says Security Report

Sophos has published its Security Threat Report 2007, examining the threat landscape during the previous twelve months, and predicting malware and spam developments for 2007. The report reveals that the U.S. hosts more than one third of the Web sites containing malicious code identified during 2006, as well as relays more spam than any other nation.

Notable findings from Sophos's Security Threat Report include:

• 90 percent of all spam is now relayed from zombie computers
• U.S. maintains top slot for relaying majority of spam (22 percent)
• Sophos detected 41,536 new pieces of malware in 2006
• Trojans now outnumber Windows viruses and worms by 4:1
• The percentage of infected e-mails declined from 1 in 44 in 2005 vs. 1 in 337 in 2006

With the U.S. and China representing nearly two-thirds of such threats, the top ten countries hosting Web-based malware during 2006 were:

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%