United States leads the way in malware and firewall attacks, says Network Box

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Hong Kong, 12 October 2010 － The US has overtaken India and Russia to become the biggest producer of viruses once more, according to analysis of internet threats by managed security company, Network Box.

The US is now responsible for 12.05 per cent of the world’s viruses, up from 4.03 per cent from August, when the US trailed both India and Russia. India takes second place with 7.17 per cent, after its virus production declined by an impressive 6.56 per cent. Russia, which was in third place, has dropped to fifth after a fall of 5.53 per cent, to be replaced by Korea, which saw an increase in production of only 0.27 per cent (reaching 6.29 per cent of virus production).

Viruses produced in the UK have dropped again (by 0.29 per cent). The UK has now dropped from fourth largest producer in July, to tenth in September.

The US and India still dominate when it comes to spam production, being responsible for 10.79 and 6.88 per cent of the worlds spam respectively. Russia has replaced Brazil as the third largest spam producer, after an increase of 2.53 per cent from last month, to 6.04 per cent of the worlds spam.

The majority of firewall attacks still originate from the US (18.65 per cent) in fact there was a slight increase of 0.32 per cent in September. Mark Webb-Johnson, CTO of Network Box Corporation at Network Box, says: ‘As usual, it is ports 80, 137 and 8080 that take the majority of the probes but it is interesting to see probes against TCP 1521 entering the top 10. This port is frequently used by Oracle as a “listener” and also by nCube licence manager. I would suspect it is worth probing in case Oracle is on there and the listener has not been properly secured.’

Mark Webb-Johnson continues: ‘The rapidity with which a country can climb, and fall, the threat charts serves as a reminder of the fluidity of the cybercrime industry. Also it is always interesting looking at the ports being probed as these vary dependent on the latest vulnerability or perhaps a knowledge that default settings on some applications do not protect correctly or are not correctly secured.’

Top Sources of Viruses
Country Daily Average %
United States 12.055
India 7.17778
Korea 6.29308
Brazil 6.00757
Russia 5.523
Australia 4.85767
Vietnam 4.37955
Ukraine 2.68576
China 2.68089
United Kingdom 2.20062

Top Sources of Spam
Country Daily Average %
United States 10.79224
India 6.88932
Russia 6.04657
China 5.1727
Brazil 5.09237
United Kingdom 4.28063
Ukraine 3.33066
Vietnam 3.13332
Korea 2.34497
Australia 2.1474

Top Sources of Firewall Blocks
Country Daily Average %
United States 18.65075
Korea 13.12423
Australia 12.5444
China 10.66144
Malaysia 10.24928
Hong Kong 6.55218
United Kingdom 2.24347
ap 2.00501
Argentina 1.74559
Canada 1.15522

Top Firewall blocks by Port
Protocol / Port Daily Average %
TCP:80 16.41811
UDP:137 9.82517
TCP:8080 6.0455
UDP:123 5.94138
UDP:53 3.27504
TCP:443 3.17302
UDP:138 2.45289
UDP:161 2.25305
TCP:25 2.06095
TCP:1521 1.56607

For more information, please see www.network-box.com.

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About Network Box: Network Box Corporation, is a multi-award winning managed security services company, specialising in Unified Threat Management (UTM). It continuously defends the networks of its customers using PUSH technology to instantaneously update protection, from 12 Security Operations Centres spread across the globe. Network Box Corporation has been named one of the world's Top 100 Strategic IT Vendors by MIS Asia Magazine for three years in a row. The company's customers across the globe, include many of the world's best known corporations, organisations, and government departments.

Further press information from:
Esker Li
Marketing Department
Network Box Hong Kong Limited
Tel: (852) 2736 2083
Email: marketing@network-box.com.hk