Thursday, 5 July 2007

Beijing No. 1 Originator Of Spams, Malwares

The Chinese capital of Beijing has a dubious distinction of being the place where Tiananmen Square incident happened. Now

According to security vendor Network Box Corp., 40 per cent of all malicious software in June had its origin in Beijing, almost doubling from 21 per cent in May.

However, according to Simon Heron, the managing director of Network Box spam from Beijing dropped from 11 per cent to 5 per cent over the same time period.

Beijing kept the number one spot for malware, followed by Wattleup, Australia, at 3.7 per cent, and Madrid, at 2.5 per cent, according to Network Box.

Heron said, as China increases its computer penetration, most software sold there are pirated and hence are not up to date which means they are prime targets for hackers who are actually located elsewhere in the world.

Those compromised computers, which are used to send spam and make it more difficult to identify the spammer, are so valuable that hacker gangs have been competing to take over machines, Heron said.