Russia overtakes China as the world's highest producer of malware and viruses

A substantial rise in malware originating from Russia has allowed the nation to overtake China for the first time in over a year as the world's most active malware producer.

27.89 percent of all malware detected by PC Tools' Threat Expert comes from Russia. China was found to produce 26.52 percent.

The demise of the malware distributor, the Russian Business Network (RBN), has done little to curb malware production in the country.

The St. Petersburg-based, RBN shut-down last November following numerous media reports detailing shady dealings.

“The vacuum left by the RBN has been filled by other malware distributors,” said Sergei Shevchenko, malware research analyst at PC Tools. “The bottom line is that there are more viruses and spyware coming out of Russia now than ever before and the complexity of this malware is also increasing” Shevencko said.

“Like many malware researchers we bemoaned the demise of RBN because at least when in existence we could monitor their activity. Now we are seeing Russian malware hosting services being advertised for servers in Malaysia, China, Panama, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey and India with ‘shadow’ providers in the US making cyber-crime more complicated to track.”

Shevchenko said it is getting more difficult for security analysts to track malware and the demise of RBN was not necessarily a good thing.

The World Threat Chart

1. Russia – 27.89%
2. China – 26.52%
3. United States – 9.98%
4. Brazil – 6.77%
5. Ukraine – 5.45%
6. United Kingdom – 5.34%
7. France – 3.81%
8. Germany – 2.14%
9. Sweden - 1.6%
10. Spain – 1.37%

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