What you need to know about the new direct marketing guidance note
Nadine Mather and Chloë Loubser
India on top of Sophos' Dirty Dozen report
Sophos has published its latest 'Dirty Dozen' report of spam-relaying countries for the third quarter of 2012. Since the previous quarter, India has grown its lead at the top of the hall of shame, and now relays 16.1% of all spam captured in SophosLabs's global network of spam traps.
The US, which was once a permanent fixture as the leading superpower in the spam stakes and last topped the table in the same period a year ago, has risen one place since last quarter and now relays one in 15 of all spam e-mails. The UK, which has managed to remain out of the top twelve spam-relaying countries for the last four consecutive quarters (having last appeared in April - June 2011) makes a return to the list, in twelfth place.
The top 12 spam-relaying countries for July to September 2012 are as follows:
- India 16.1%
- Italy 9.4%
- USA 6.5%
- Saudi Arabia 5.1%
- Brazil 4.0%
- Turkey 3.8%
- France 3.7%
- South Korea 3.6%
- Vietnam 3.4%
- China 3.1%
- Germany 2.7%
- United Kingdom 2.1%
42. South Africa 0.33%
Other 36.5%
Saudi Arabia is the top new entry this quarter, relaying a significant 5.1% of spam for the period. This is likely caused by the Festi botnet which successfully infected many computers there in August and then used the computers to swamp the rest of the world with large quantities of spam. Other new entries since last quarter are Turkey and Germany, while Pakistan, Russia, Poland and Thailand have all dropped out of the table.
More online, more problems
As noted in Sophos's April-June 2012 Dirty Dozen report, India is home to 5.3% of the world's Internet users, making it the third most connected country in the world after China and the US. However, given that only 10.2% of the population of India are Internet users, the current lack of IT security measures taken to protect computers in the region will likely lead to further problems as more of India's citizens get online.
"Spam e-mails arrive in your inbox via other people's infected computers. The latest Dirty Dozen report suggests that a significant number of PCs in India are harbouring malware infections that turn PCs into spam relaying zombies, controlled by the cyber criminals who make money punting junk e-mails, or simply use malicious spam to infect more computers," says Brett Myroff, CEO of Sophos distributor, NetXactics.
Asia the worst offender
Taking a global view, Asia is still the worst offending continent, responsible for almost half of the world's spam, followed by Europe and South America. Top spam relaying continents for July to September 2012 are as follows:
- Asia 48.7%
- Europe 28.2%
- South America 10.2%
- North America 9.5%
- Africa 2.9%
- Other 0.5%
"Spam is still a big threat to computer users, particularly for those who might not be aware of the dangers of clicking on links in unsolicited e-mails. This could represent a ticking time bomb as Asian nations like India and China - with comparatively few computer users in terms of their overall populations - continue to become more connected," Myroff adds.
