Sophos has revealed a lovely list of the top 12 countries when it comes to sending spam. While some of the entrants are no surprise the top placed United States is believed to be at this position because of the emergence of over 300 strains of the mass-spammed Stratio worm.
“Most unsolicited emails are now sent from zombie PCs – computers infected with Trojans, worms and viruses that turn them into spam-spewing bots. In the past hackers were very reliant on operating system vulnerabilities to convert an innocent computer into a zombie – now they are turning back to malware to trick users into running their malicious code, and opening the backdoor to hackers,” said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos. “Hundreds of new versions of the Stratio worm have helped steadily increase the volume of spam seen travelling across the net.”