The dirty dozen spam-relaying countries revealed

There’s a zombie invasion going on – and it could have infiltrated your business, your home office, or even the corner of your bedroom.

Of course, it’s not the kind of zombies beloved by the movie theatres but instead the problem of compromised computers being controlled by a remote hacker.

Many members of the public still haven’t understood that spammers don’t use their own PCs to send spam – instead they create botnets of commandeered computers around the globe (also known as “zombies”), which can be used to relay spam, send out malicious links and even launch distributed denial-of-service attacks.

If they did understand the problem, maybe they would put more effort into protecting their computers.

Sophos has today published a new report, revealing the top twelve spam-relaying countries around the world. We call the list the “dirty dozen”, and because virtually all spam is sent…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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