Sophos Dirty Dozen Report: One out of Six Spam Messages Comes from India

Sophos has released another one of its “dirty dozen” reports to detail the origins of spam for the period between July and September 2012.

As it turns out, India is responsible for 16.1% of the world’s spam, followed by Italy (9.4%), USA (6.5%), Saudi Arabia (5.1%), Brazil (4%), Turkey (3.8%), France (3.7%), South Korea (3.6%), Vietnam (3.4%), China (3.1%), Germany (2.7%) and the UK (2.1%).

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the unsolicited messages are sent by the citizens of these countries. Instead, it means that their computers are not properly secured and cybercriminals can abuse them to relay spam.

“The latest Dirty Dozen report suggests that a not insignificant number of PCs in India are harbouring malware infections that turn PCs into spam-spitting zombie slaves, controlled by the cybercriminals who make money by punting junk emails to promote questionable goods, or simply use malicious spam to infect more computers,” Sophos's Graham Cluley noted.

From the perspective of spam-relaying continents, Asia tops the chart with close to 50%. Europe follows with 28.2%, computers from the Americas being utilized to send a total of 20% of the world’s spam.