Malicious Internet Activity By Countries

The reality of Cyberwars reached a new level in the wake of sustained denial-of service attack on the Estonian government web sites which were targeted for several weeks in April and May this year. A global botnet of compromised home computers was used to create and direct the packet flood attack and hackers also defaced key government web sites.
Malicious activity will continue to be on the rises as we move away to more and more towards e-commerce. This is going to poise a treat to the countries and business a like.
According to Symamtec's last Internet Security Threat Report on malicious cyber activity in different countries the United States accounted for 31% of malicious activity, China came in second with 10%,Germany was in third place with 7%, France (4%) and United Kingdom 4% completed the top five.
Taking the amount of a country's malicious activity and dividing by the number of that country's Internet users, Symantec found that Israel has the most per capita malicious Internet users, at 9 percent. Taiwan came in second, with 8 percent, and the United States came in third, with 6 percent.
Fifty one percent of all underground economy servers known to the company were located in the United States—the highest total of any country. In that underground economy, your credit card, with a card verification number, will fetch between $1 and $6. Your identity is more pricey, going for $14-$18 including your U.S. bank account, credit card, date of birth and government-issued identification number.Malicious code sniffing out confidential information such as credit card numbers increased from 48 percent of Symantec's Top 50 malicious code reports in the first half of 2006 to 66 percent in the second half. Threats that log keystrokes and export sensitive user and system data increased, with keystroke loggers now making up 79 percent of threats to confidential information.
China is becoming a powerhouse in the world of viruses, phishing scams, and botnets. The country's hackers also are setting their collective sights on the best gamers out there. When it comes to botnets, however, China is leading the pack, with the United States coming in second, according to Vincent Weafer, senior director of Symantec Security Response. Independent Chinese hackers also are launching the most zero-day exploits against government targets.When it comes to gamers, though, China has really focused its malicious efforts.Half of the world's 8 million online gamers come from China, according to Weafer. With that much gaming activity going on, it's creating not just a target for hackers looking for a little fun, but it's also creating a market for people to buy the identities of successful gamers.

The major treats for future are;

More Vista threats will appear, with vulnerabilities, malicious code and attacks focused against Vista's Teredo platform Vista's Teredo platform, which is a bridge protocol between IPv4 and IPv6.

Attackers will focus on third-party applications that run on Vista.

New phishing economies will develop in which phishers expand their targets to include new industry sectors, such as massively multiplayer online games.

Phishers will develop new techniques, such as ready-made phishing kits, to evade antiphishing solutions such as block lists.

Spam and phishing will increasingly target SMS and MMS on mobile platforms.

New attacks will be developed to hit virtual environments as a way of compromising host systems.