Sophos has published its latest report on the top twelve spam relaying countries over the second quarter of 2006. US spam reduction stalls while spam sent through European zombie PCs gains momentum.
SophosLabs 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 per cent of the world's spam. Its closest rivals are China and South Korea, although both of these nations have managed to reduce their statistics 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.
The top twelve spam relaying countries are as follows (April to June 2006):
"Since the introduction of the CAN-SPAM legislation in 2004, we've seen a regular quarter-on-quarter drop in the proportion of spam coming from the US - until now, that is," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "Given the number of arrests, and the huge fines dished out to guilty spammers, it's hard to criticise the US for failing to take action. Perhaps the reality is that the statistics can't be reduced any further unless US home users take action to secure their computers and put a halt to the zombie PC problem."
Spam Relayed By Continent
Asia accounts for more spam than any other continent, however spam relaying in Europe continues to become more prevalent. While in Q1 2006, 25 per cent of the world's spam was sent out from European countries, the figure has now reached 27.1 per cent. Europe has now overtaken North America as a spreader of spam.
The breakdown of spam relaying by continent is as follows (April to June 2006):
Russia Conspiciously Absent From the Dirty Dozen
Even though Russia does not feature in the dirty dozen of spam relaying countries, Sophos has uncovered evidence that Russian spammers may be controlling vast networks of zombie PCs. Sophos recently discovered a Russian spamming price list, which showed that 500 USD would purchase email distribution to eleven million Russian email addresses. On top of this companies could buy distribution to one million addresses in any country they wanted for just 50 USD.
[The topmost of the links below shows the Russian price list, specifying distribution quantities and prices for various options such as Greater Moscow, Russia, Ukraine, etc (based on your editor's less than perfect understanding of the Russian language). The prices are in Rubles.
The second link is to Sophos' advisory paper regarding minimising spam exposure. --Ed].
Related links: (Open in a new window.)
www.sophos.com/images/common/misc/spamcost.gif
www.sophos.com/security/best-practice/
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