America: A Global Leader in Spam

Who says the U.S. isn’t the world’s top dog? When it comes to relaying spam via hacked computers, America plays second fiddle to no one. Larry Barrett reports.

We’re still No. 1.

According to security software vendor Sophos, the U.S. leads the rest of the world in relaying annoying and potential dangerous emailed-based spam, accounting for more than 18 percent of all spam traffic in the fourth quarter.

That’s almost three times more than the next closest spam-spewing country, India (6.9 percent), and five- to six-fold more than the bottom half of Sophos’ Dirty Dozen list of nations responsible for 60 percent of all spam messages.

“The US’s domination of the list underlines the continuing problem of computers being compromised by hackers in the country, allowing them to be remotely controlled for criminal purposes without the owners’ knowledge,” Sophos security researchers said in the report.

More concerning for enterprises and consumers regardless of their location is the sharp spike in malicious spam — the type that immediately affects PCs or mobile devices or redirects people to malware-laden websites — that now accounts for almost 5 percent of all email traffic.

Read the rest at eSecurity Planet.