Leapfrogging the US as the largest Internet market in the world apparently wasn't enough of an achievement. In a move that's sure to freshly inflame Sinophobes comes a report that China has overtaken the US in that all-important measure of online development and ingenuity: bot production.
Here's one lead the US can only be too happy to cede to China... or any other country.
"China emerged as the worldwide leader in both zombie production and the execution of SQL-injection attacks, while Internet-based attacks played a bigger role and will continue to do so as cybercriminals target the most popular social destinations in 2010," said Mike Gallagher, senior VP and CTO at McAfee Labs, in a statement.
Daily spam volume in the fourth quarter of 2009 averaged 135.5 billion messages. Yes, per day. The good news? That was a 24 percent drop over the third quarter of 2009.
Spammers' and phishers' favorite headline topics to exploit in 2009 included the Air France plane crash, Michael Jackson's death, the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and the H1N1 vaccine.
The US is still tops in terms of spam production, followed by Brazil and India. Ukraine and Germany joined the list of top 10 spam producers for the first time. (Welcome! And congratulations.)
Politically motivated cyber-offensives are on the rise around the world, as demonstrated by the Iranian Army's attack on Twitter. "The report confirms that the United States is not the sole target, nor is China the sole origin for these types of attacks with recent political attacks targeting the Polish government, the Copenhagen Climate Conference and Latvia’s Independence Day," McAfee said.
Cybercriminals zeroed in on social-networking sites, with Koobface activity increasing considerably during the latter part of 2009. Koobface is now hosted by servers in 46 countries; the US, Germany, and Denmark are the top three hosting locations.
But China's newly attained (or perhaps better stated, newly documented) prominence in malware and cyber-offense is the real news. In the fourth quarter of 2009, China produced 12 percent of the world's botnet zombies -- those surreptitiously infected desktops that send spam, host malware, or provide storage space for illicit content. The US was second on the list at 9.5 percent (down from 13.1 percent the previous quarter); Brazil, Russia, and Germany rounded out the top five.
China's other notable breakthrough came as leader of origination points for SQL-injection attacks -- 54.4 percent of all recorded attacks.
All these data points will no doubt embolden China's critics, who claim the country and its leaders either encourage such malfeasance or ignore it at their peril and flirt with state-sponsored cyber-warfare. Given Google's recent conflation of Chinese intrusions and censorship, plus Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's very important policy speech on Internet freedom, the Chinese may indeed be feeling some heat -- the government made a very big deal about shutting down a hacker's academy this week, taking great pains to emphasize the state had no role or interest in the organization.
So before we really give the Chinese the wire brush, McAfee reports that North America is still the worldwide leader in hosting malicious content, then Europe/Middle East/Asia, followed by Asia/Pacific.
Ironically, the great Internet firewall that surrounds China and filters out content that's problematic fosters the problem of malware hosting and bot production, according to a number of security experts.
"This is China's payback for allowing rampant pirating of software, especially Microsoft Windows," said Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst for IT-Harvest, in an email. "Several years ago Microsoft implemented protection measures that would only allow legitimate license holders to install patches, such as today's mega-update. Because there are so many bootleg copies of Windows running on consumer PCs in China they have become the primary home for infected PCs."
And you don't even have to be Chinese to take advantage of all the in-country malware resources, according to Ra Security founder Gideon Lenkey. "Just because the attacks originate from China doesn't mean the people behind the attacks are Chinese or even physically in China," Lenkey wrote in an email. "China's Internet is very closed off from the rest of the Internet so it's a great position to attack from."
Unlike the Senate's recent flaccid, no-cost condemnation of the Chinese for hacking Google servers, it's numbers like these that are more likely to encourage the Chinese to clean up their national act. Will this mean new policy changes to its national firewall? An amnesty program for Windows pirates? Or more likely, highly publicized trials (and penalties) for bad-Net hosts in China? Stay tuned -- however it is that the world's largest Internet market responds will have global repercussions.
This blog is part of Internet Evolution's Security Clan, which examines the future of Internet security and the changing nature of risks and vulnerabilities. To join the Security Clan,register here.
Now I have my Conspiracy Theorist's Hat on-Is this all part of China's game for Total World Domination?
You know ,just control all the world's PCs and get them to do your bidding whenever it suits you?
After all,most of these Botnets are on Sale to the Highest Bidder and nobody has more Cash today than the Chinese Govt.
Its something worth thinking about.
After all,what is the one thing that the Communist Party is most scared of?Its information getting out of their litany of mistakes and abuses.If that information becomes public knowledge their days of Supremacy in China are toast.
Right, I understood your point... I was just trying get inside the head of a Chinese customer and understand what the attraction or benefit might be where pirated software's concerned.
Right, mnt.code... but "stealing" Linux just doesn't offer the same kick, does it? I've never been to China and have no direct experience, but if I had to guess I'd say the average Chinese consumer likes getting something that costs a couple hundred bucks (or whatever a Windows suite costs these days) for free. It's a lot less thrilling to download or use freeware. And Msft's global desktop footprint (email, word processing, web browsing, spreadsheets) makes it easier and more attractive to would-be pirates.
I haven't understood why the Chinese were so enamored with bootleg copies of Windows when Linux has the same price ($0) and unlimited updates and fixes. Now it's a whole country of unpatched computers, ripe for any botnet or zombie scheme. If a deal looks too good to be true (free Windows), it usually is.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
Edward Snowden was so convinced that the Prism program involved secretive surveillance through Internet backdoors that he walked out on his job and his girlfriend, spoke to the media, and resigned himself to jail, or worse. It turns out, he might just be wrong.
In one of the nastiest -- not to mention large scale and long-term -- hacking exploits yet to be reported, it appears that the Chinese army has been rummaging through the data of those who have served in the US Armed Forces.
ASA Risk Consultants added its voice this week to the slowly growing chorus of voices demanding a coordinated international response to cyberattacks. In a research note circulated by IDG, ASA asserts that "nations will need to come to an agreement on how cyber warfare should be handled."
Extending existing US wiretap laws to give federal agencies easier backdoor access to Internet communications -- especially real-time P2P services like VoIP -- will give, not only aid and comfort, but also technical assistance, to the country's enemies. Not to mention cyberthieves.
When David E. Sanger of The New York Times broke the news that the United States was responsible for the Stuxnet malware exploit against Iran's nuclear program, Senator John McCain accused the administration of deliberately leaking the story to enhance President Obama's national security record.
Saunders predicts the decline and fall of America’s Internet empire, and explains how the Internet of the future will be multi-lingual as well as multi-national.
Saunders explains how Internet users in North America are already vastly outnumbered by those in the rest of the world – a situation which is only set to accelerate.
US counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke, who came to prominence with his prescient warnings before the 9/11 attacks, tells Smithsonian Magazine the US was responsible for the Stuxnet supersmart worm that attacked parts of nuclear reactors in Iran – and in the process, has given away one of the world's most sophisticated cyberweapons.
Is China a threat because it censors US sites, or could it be that the country might have an economic formula that will out-innovate us on the Internet that we invented?
The United States' taxpayer-funded technology delegation to Russia turns into a mortifying embarrassment for anyone even remotely proud to be American.
When Reiter gets incensed over incompetent Verizon FiOS order-taking and support, he broadcasts it via Twitter. Did it do any good? How should your company offer Twitter support? Watch this for all the answers.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
So here we are, the last day of the 2013 US Open Golf Championship at Merion, and Phil Mickelson -- who has been a US Open runner-up five times now but never taken the trophy -- is right up there at the top of the leaderboard.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
Email This
