According to the IT security and experts at SophosLabs, India is among the world’s top spam-relaying countries. The experts say there’s more than one in ten chance that a spam in your inbox has originated from an Indian computer. Sophos have detailed the world’s spam-relaying countries in its latest “dirty dozen” report. Interestingly, India had topped the list in Sophos’ previous “dirty dozen” list as well.
The latest Sophos report says India accounts for an 11.4 percent of the total world spam (for the period between April and June). Italy ranks second on the list with 7 percent. U.S. ranks third with 6.2 percent share. Countries such as Pakistan (3.7 percent) and China (3.2 percent) are also mentioned in the list of the top 12 spam relaying countries.
India being the top spam-relaying nation has surprised SophosLabs experts, as the country has only 5.3 percent of the world’s Internet users. The experts further explain the spams coming from India may not necessarily be about the India goods. Moreover, chances are such spammers using the ‘compromised’ Indian computers are not based in the country and “just taking advantage of zombie computers that have been unwittingly recruited into a botnet”.
“The vast majority of spam comes from home computers that have been compromised by hackers in this way. Remote hackers can send spam from recruited computers, as well as potentially steal information or install other malicious code,” detail the experts.
The SophosLabs experts also point out that the stats show the need for more appropriate measures to be taken by growing economies to block malware infections that turn their PCs into spam-spewing zombies.
Check out our coverage on Sophos’ previous dirty dozen report here.
Source: Sophos
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