Spam: Asia and Europe Overtake North America

The most recent figures released by enterprise IT security and control firm Sophos indicate that the U.S. remains the top spamming country in the world, followed by Russia, China (including Hong Kong), Brazil, and South Korea.

During the span of October to December of 2007, the U.S. was responsible for relaying 21.3% of the world’s spam, a “testament to the sheer number of computers in the country that have been taken over by remote hackers,” according to Sophos. Russia surged into second place, relaying 8.3% of the world’s spam, while China was third most filthy, relaying 4.2% of all spam messages in the world.

Brazil was fourth on the list, with 4% of all spam messages originating there, while South Korea was fifth with 3.9% of all spam relayed from there during the fourth quarter of 2007.

Turkey (3.8%), Italy (3.5%), Poland (3.4%), Germany (3.2%), Spain (3.1%), Mexico (3.1%), and the United Kingdom (2.5%) rounded out the list of the top 12 spam and malicious message relaying countries.

Despite the U.S.’s dominant position at the top of the list, North America (26.5%) dropped from being the top spam relaying continent to the third, being outdone by Asia (32.1%) and Europe (27.1%). South America was fourth (12.5%), trailed at a distance by Africa (1.1%).

The report issued by Sophos also shed light on an interesting technique that spammers used to push pump-and-dump schemes. In October, spam messages with MP3 attachments of what appeared to be songs by popular artists (including Elvis and Carrie Underwood) were sent out to unknowing recipients. However, instead of downloading songs, the user victim would hear someone advising them to purchase shares of an obscure company.

Source:
http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/
articles/2008/02/dirtydozfeb08.html