Business Bytes
Mar 30, 2010

China: Malware Capital Of The World

 

What a claim to fame for Shaoxing, China. It holds the world record for most malware attacks coming out of the country with the national title in the same category. China, in fact, is host to more than 30% of all malicious attacks. Romania comes in at number two with 21%.

This, according to a recent intelligence report on internet security by Symantec.

Useful tidbits within the report include:

1. .xls and .doc files are typically the file type of choice used as attachments on suspect e-mails.

2. Engineering, education, the pharmacuetical industry, IT and retail are the top five targeted industries (and in that order) for spammers.

3. The riskiest file type is .rar, which make up less than one percent of all attached files. That being said, more than 96% of the time they are corrupted.

4. Hungary gets the most spam per e-mail account.

5. Great Britain is home to the most phishing attacks.

By the way, the honest folk of Shaoxing would probably like you to focus less on the malware claim to fame and more on the news that they'll be hosting the 2010 World Choir Games in July.

Hey, it is the world's biggest choir competition!


Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio