Advanced

Report: Malware capital of the world is Shaoxing, China

Posted by tracyanne on · 9 comments
ZDNet; By Andrew Nusca 		Mail this story
Print this story

Computer security firm Symantec announced on Monday that Shaoxing, China was malware capital of the world last month.

[Something we never have to worry all that much about, but interesting in a morbid sort of way, I thought.]

According to the company’s research, nearly 30 percent of all malicious attacks came from China — with 21.3 percent from Shaoxing alone. Runner-up to the crown was Taipei, at 16.5 percent, with London taking the bronze at 14.8 percent.

On a national scale, China trumped all, followed by Romania, with 21.1 percent of attempted attacks, and the United States, with 13.8 percent.

There is lots of great data in this report. For example, the majority of targeted malware sent this month originated in the U.S. based on mail server location, at 36.6 percent. When arranged by sender location, however, the previously stated figures hold true.

Full Story

  Nav
» Read more about:

» Get new stories by e-mail: nightly or as they are published

« Return to the newswire homepage

  Related stories
» More like this

Comments (9)

gus3 ·
Red Flag Linux is the official Linux distribution of the PRC. Thus the malware writers have a strong demotivator against making Linux their target.
tracyanne Story submitter ·
Good point
Sander_Marechal ·
I'm not convinced. I can see Chinese hackers targeting Red Flag in order to penetrate or even bring down the Great Firewall of China.
gus3 ·
Nowhere in the article does the author mention "criminal" or "illegal" activity. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that at least some of the malware is written and distributed with the authorities' consent.
caitlyn ·
Quoting:I don't think it's a stretch to assume that at least some of the malware is written and distributed with the authorities' consent.


Some is written right here in the U.S. by legitimate companies to test security measures. It is supposed to be limited to labs and isn't supposed to ever get out into the wild. So long as that is true there is nothing at all illegal about it. It's just part of the process of building better security.
hkwint ·
gus3: You're wrong, Windows in the official distribution of the PRC - as the party was able to view the source code and probably used that to embed their 'green wall' in it and make sure it's hard to circumvent. After that, Red Flag development almost halted AFAIK.

More here: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/...

Look at Asianux or RedFlag website, all pretty much death or outdated over three years (I wanted to revieuw Red Flag - but you might equally well review Red Hat 2.0).
TxtEdMacs ·
Hans,

Gus gets confused too easily, but never I. How would CCP allow their populous get too comfy with the concept of freedom, even if it were only software. Never. MS will sell out just for some cash and no real competition, which will suit the two parties all too well.

YBT

P.S. Ok, if you want me to stop bad mouthing you, send a cashier's check. The bouncing fees are killing me!
gus3 ·
Hey now, just because I posted a reply on a wrong thread...

and put in a wrong link on Groklaw last night...

Okay, I get confused too easily.
TxtEdMacs ·
gus,
Quoting:Hey now, just because I posted a reply on a wrong thread...
Don't worry about that, could happen to any one.

Quoting:and put in a wrong link on Groklaw last night...
That could happen to any one. Groklaw is a special site where due to the excess of esoteric jargon confusion reigns. So once again all is forgiven.

However, you posted on lwn, crowing on SCO's supposed legal defeat. Don't you know that entity will rise from the dead to theorize the tech world again. When that day happens, we will call it another Gus Day. The next one will a 3. Unforgivable, you will live in shame for ...*

YBT

* Did you know that this multiverse had the precursors of material particles the order of a microsecond after the Flash? That means when what we call the universe was the size of a small fraction of a kilometer much of the characteristics of its future evolution were being determined**.

** View the bigger picture and don't sweat the small stuff.

Post a comment

A free account is needed to post. Write your comment here first: your text is kept in this browser while you sign up or log in, and is waiting for you when you come back.

Your message:
|||||
10
Markdown: **bold**, *italic*, [text](https://link), - lists, > quotes, $x^2$ for math. Formatting help

Sign up and post (it is free)  or  Log in and post