May 5th, 2009
McAfee: Welcome to the United States of Zombie PCs
McAfee on Tuesday released its quarterly report on Internet security. The results? Cybercriminals have taken control of 12 million new IP addresses since January.
Add it up and the U.S. contributes 18 percent of the IP addresses controlled by botnets. These zombie PCs appear to be lining up to enable spammers to recover from the November 2008 dismantling of McColo Corp.
If you recall, McColo disappeared and spam levels fell 60 percent. That spam drop didn’t last long, reckons McAfee.
A few select charts from the report:
Here’s a census of percentage of zombie machines controlled by spammers by country and IP:
And the spam production by country:
And Conficker fears are overblown relative to AutoRun vulnerabilities:
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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