OXFORD, England - Russia has emerged as a "spam superpower," information-technology security experts said Tuesday, after Sophos' global network of spam traps discovered a dramatic rise in the proportion of spam sent from compromised Russian computers.
Russia is second to the U.S., accounting for 8.3 percent of the world's spam, or one in 12 junk email messages.
Sophos, which is dedicated to protecting businesses from known and emerging malware - viruses, rootkits and spyware - and computer threats such as phishing, spam and scams, also reported that Asia and Europe are quickly closing in on North America, the continent that currently makes the greatest contribution to the global spam problem.
Between October and December 2007, the United States transmitted much more spam than other countries due to the sheer number of computers taken over by remote hackers. The nation's 21 percent share translates to more than one in five spam email messages sent through compromised computers during the report period.
"Responsible for a third of all spam, the U.S. and Russia are the two dirty men of the spam generation, polluting email traffic with unwanted and potentially malicious messages," said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos. "It is not the case that a third of the world's spammers are based in those countries, but that legions of computers are poorly defended, allowing hackers to break in and turn them into botnets for the spreading of spam and malware."
In Sophos' list of the top 12 spam-relaying countries from October to December 2007, the United States and Russia are followed by China (4.2 percent), Brazil (4 percent), South Korea (3.9 percent), Turkey (3.8 percent), Italy (3.5 percent), Poland (3.4 percent), Germany (3.2 percent), Spain (3.1 percent), Mexico (3.1 percent) and the U.K. (2.5 percent).
Other countries accounted for 35.7 percent of the world's spam.
