As Internet activity and economic growth skyrockets in China, the country is quickly becoming a malware powerhouse. An earlier Sophos report claimed that 30 percent of all malware written in 2006 originated from China, with 17 percent of that 30 percent devoted to stealing the passwords of online gamers. This stands in contrast to Brazil, where malware authors were mostly interested in gathering online banking information rather than games logins.

The US comes in just behind China, hosting 32.3 percent of all malware-infected sites, and Germany is a distant third with 7.5 percent. Russia, which hosted nearly 10 percent of all such sites in 2006, now hosts less than 5 percent of them, a drop of 50 percent in only a few months. This does not necessarily mean that Russia has suddenly grown more law-abiding, though, only that malware is skyrocketing.

Not that all malware is bad: Sophos notes that a 20-year old German man turned himself in to federal authorities last year after receiving a virus-encumbered message that claimed to be from German authorities. The man, who had child porn on his PC, promptly gave himself up, believing that investigators were on to him.... More

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