UK Officially The Most Hacked Country

_Hellfire_ writes "Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report for the second half of 2004 says that the UK is leading the rest of the world with bot networks. The report states that "...25.2% [of bots] are located in the UK. That now puts the country ahead of the US (24.6%), China (7.8%), Canada (4.9%) and Spain (3.8%)". Symantec blames a sudden uptake of residential broadband connections without the awareness of the required security measures."

Comments

It's called a hardware NAT router

[jabuzz]

Basically they should be made compulsary for all broadband connections. It is the plethora of cheap USB ADSL modems that are being offered free with connections that it causing the problem.

As a Brit...

[bobintetley]

I can definitely vouch for this, I personally witnessed some 20 odd pieces of malware duking it out on my brothers 2Mbit broadband to see who could relay the most spam.

Since then, I've converted the majority of my friends and family to Debian and they haven't looked back.

Speaking as a non-hacked Brit

[CdBee]

The situation really is bad..
In the last year 512Kbs ADSL Broadband has tumbled in price to little more expensive than unmetered dial-up, and a lot of clueless types bought in

Typical British ISPs provide a USB modem for ADSL or an Ethernet/USB Cable modem, and a driver/configurator disk. No consumer ISP provides a NAT router by default (its a costly option, and usually a crappy rebranded far-eastern product that crashes all the time).

Very few of them even provide a software firewall. AOL is a notable exception (about time they did something right) providing a firewall in their standard AOL Broadband software.

I spend a lot of my free time installing Zonealarm/Sygate Personal for clueless people wondering why their brand new XP box and brand new ADSL connection keep crashing....

Re:Speaking as a non-hacked Brit

[Ford Prefect]

Typical British ISPs provide a USB modem for ADSL or an Ethernet/USB Cable modem, and a driver/configurator disk. No consumer ISP provides a NAT router by default (its a costly option, and usually a crappy rebranded far-eastern product that crashes all the time).

I got a fairly decent NAT router with my ADSL account with a small UK ISP. They also block a variety of Windows-worm-attracting ports by default - you have to ask to get them unblocked, and then they'll run a quick port-scan on your system to make sure you're not a sitting duck.

I've not actually needed any ports unblocking, and I'd class myself as a fairly advanced user. So why can't the big-name ISPs do this as well? Okay, it's not going to stop browser malware, email trojans and the like, but it'll definitely help against the nastier, faster-spreading worms...

UK consumers

[ScouseMouse]

Speaking as a UK consumer, it doesnt surprise me. Most of the people i deal with dont bother with a virus checker until they start having problems, and most viruses these days seem to be designed for creating botnets so try to not to hog resources, crash the computer or use too much bandwidth. If only other windows programs were so well designed :-) When I first got broadband (About 2 years ago?) , the ISP i use, (Pipex) offered a free virus checker and gave instructions on how to run it. They dont any more. Nor do anyone else. I personally think that no-one who manages their own computer and *doesnt* know when their virus checker was last updated shouldnt be allowed near the internet.

So is...

[ArsonSmith]

Someone at Symantic retiring and they are trying to pump up the stock?

Recent Symantic news:
OSX Doom and gloom, Symantic will save you.

Fire Fox doom and gloom Symantic will save you.

Now this

UK almost hosted the world's biggest cyberheist

[Madas]

I read here that bots in the UK nearly led to nearly half a billion dollars being siphoned off a Japanese bank.