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US Reigns As Most Bot-Infected Country

Posted by samzenpus on from the we're-number-one dept.

Trailrunner7 writes "The US has by far the highest number of bot-infected computers of any country in the world, with nearly four times as many infected PCs as the country in second place, Brazil, according to a new report by Microsoft. The quarterly report on malicious software and Internet attacks shows that while some of the major botnets have been curtailed in recent months, the networks of infected PCs still represent a huge threat."

4 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Quick Question by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many computers total are in the US compared to other countries of the world?

    Simple counts don't cut it in the real world of statistics.

    I bet 100% of Canadian computers could be infected and we still might not beat out the US. Considering the Population of California alone is greater than our national population (or at least it was last time I checked).

    1. Re:Quick Question by tacarat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Real statistics don't cut it in the world of headlines.

      --
      "Common sense will be the death of us all"
    2. Re:Quick Question by martin-boundary · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Simple counts don't cut it in the real world of statistics.

      Huh? It entirely depends on what the statistics are being used for. Simple counts are useful when the amount of activity is proportional to the population size.

      For example, with a botnet, it's the absolute number of bots that matters, because the bots in a botnet are interchangeable (it doesn't matter where they're located, or what processor they're running, etc).

      So if you're going to propose botnet solutions on a per country basis, then you want to know which country has the greatest number of active bots, not the country which has the greatest percentage of infectected computers.

  2. True measure by __aagmrb7289 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This report is not a good measure of anything. It only counts botnets cleaned by Microsoft's program, and it doesn't talk about infections per capita. It measures nothing, and is pretty close to useless. Yay. Okay, that's not totally fair - there is useful information in it. But the article has very little of that information, and the summary has none of it. Now, yay.