The global IT security and data protection firm Sophos reveals 49.7 per cent of all spam captured in SophosLab’s global network of spam traps were sent from throughout April, May and June. The latest ‘Dirty Dozen’ of spam-relaying countries published by Sophos also shows India is the country topped the list by a significant margin and was accountable for 11.4 per cent of the world’s spam in the second quarter of 2012, despite only 5.3 per cent of the world’s internet users reportedly living in India. Malaysia is out of the top spam-relaying countries list.
The top 12 spam-relaying countries for second quarter of 2012 are as follows:
Country
1. India 11.4%
2. Italy 7.0%
3. South Korea 6.7%
4. USA 6.2%
5. Vietnam 5.8%
6. Brazil 4.4%
7. Pakistan 3.7%
8. China 3.2%
9. France 3.1%
10. Russia 2.9%
11. Poland 2.7%
12. Taiwan 2.6%
Other 40.3%
Top spam relaying continents for April-June 2012 are as follows:
Continent
1. Asia 49.7%
2. Europe 26.4%
3. South America 11.2%
4. North America 8.6%
5. Africa 3.6%
Other 0.5%
“Spam emails make up an average of 45-50% of corporate email – that is one unwanted, unsolicited message for every important communication!” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. “We all pay the price: our email systems have to process and deliver the message, and our own time is wasted dealing with the spam email once it is in our inbox.”
Sophos recommends that organisations and ISPs implement technology and follow best practice to ensure that malicious emails are not reaching inboxes. Asia increased its level of spam output, and the continent is now responsible for almost half of the world’s spam. Europe is responsible for about a quarter, while North America produced nearly 9%.
“The chief driver for Asia’s dominance in the spam charts is the sheer number of compromised computers in the continent,” explained Cluley. “Malicious hackers hijack poorly protected computers, and command them – without their owners realising – to send out unwanted money-making messages and malicious links. Everyone has a responsibility to ensure that their PC or Mac is properly defended against such attacks. If they take no care over their computers they’re simply adding to the world’s spam problem.”
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing complete security solutions that are simple to deploy, manage, and use and that deliver the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions backed by SophosLabs – a global network of threat intelligence centers. Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.
