Israel has the dubious honor of being home to the most malicious Internet activity per Internet user, according to Symantec's twice-yearly Internet Security Threat Report. The latest report, covering the second half of 2006, was just released today. This was the first time Symantec measured how much activity like spam origination, phishing site hosting and bot-infected computers could be attributed to an average Internet user. From July through December, 9 percent of all such activity traced back to Israel. Taiwan came next with 8 percent, while Poland and the US tied with 6.
Dave Cole, Director of the Symantec security response team, says it doesn't mean that viruses and phishing sites are necessarily created in Israel. A site or piece of malware could be created anywhere, but Israel is the unfortunate largest host per-capita to more than anywhere else.
Cole suggested Israel's "extremely high Internet penetration" might be the reason why, along with a large number of new Internet users who are more vulnerable to potential attack.
For overall numbers, the US still has the most malicious activity at 31 percent. China was second with 10 percent.
Other interesting points from the report include:
* Three out of four attacks against Web browsers target IE.
* IE had 92 new vulnerabilities, Mozilla 87.
* Microsoft took an average of 10 days to close security flaws, Mozilla 2.
* US-issued credit cards and debit card numbers were by far the most likely to be found for sale on the black market (86 percent).
* Phishers love soccer, too: Symantec saw a 40 percent spike in phishing messages sent out during the World Cup.
* Trojans are the malware most likely to make it onto a PC. 60 percent of attempted or cleaned infections (by Symantec) are Trojans.