Russia and China top malware list

Now Australian security company PC Tools reckons that Russia has overtaken China again, but this time as a producer of active malware such as viruses, Trojans and spyware.

Russia now occupies number one spot on this ranking with 27.4 percent of malware, slightly ahead of China on 27 percent. Both leave the US trailing in third with 10.1 percent, Brazil on 6.6 percent, and the UK with 5.32 percent. PC Tools’ own Russian researcher, Sergei Shevchenko, was in no doubt that Russia’s number one showing was significant, and even related it to the country’s glomy folklore. “The vacuum left by the RBN [Russian Business network] has been filled by other malware distributors,” he said. “Russian mythology refers to a dragon-like creature with three heads, called Zmey Gorynych that requires all three heads to be severed to ensure its death,” he said rather ominously.

The company has compiled figures from its automated Threat Expert system to create a global malware map that records figures from all countries for which there are measurable figures.