Study Reveals New Zombies Originate In China
ATLANTA – CipherTrust released findings of an analysis of real-world e-mail messages collected from companies worldwide. The analysis confirms the significant threat presented by the dramatic growth in the number of new zombies per day. In addition, the updated study reveals a decrease in the number of spam e-mails originating in the United States.

According to the study, an average of 157,000 new zombies are identified each day, with more than 20 percent originating in China. A zombie is a machine typically connected to a broadband connection that is maliciously infected by a worm or virus without the owners’ knowledge. Once a machine is infected, the new zombie awaits instructions from zombie network operators that range from launching a denial of service (DoS) attack to sending spam and phishing e-mails through the zombie machine.

“While the information regarding the number of new zombies per day and the percent originating from China is staggering, it’s not necessarily surprising given the number of new Internet users in China. Unprotected computers around the world are vulnerable to compromise within minutes of connecting to the Internet,” said Dr. Paul Judge, CipherTrust chief technology officer. “These zombies are then used for all sorts of nefarious activities, including sending spam and viruses.”

In addition, CipherTrust updated its findings related to origins of spam by message count. The Company found that approximately 56.77 percent of all spam originates in the United States. Although this number is down from nearly 86 percent during June and July 2004, the United States still ranks highest in terms of spam originations. South Korea ranks second highest with 15.67 percent, which grew 12.67 percent over the past eight months.

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