Sarah Falson

Australia and New Zealand are relatively clean when compared with the 12 top spam-relaying countries for the third quarter of 2007, according to research put together by IT security company, Sophos.

The United States was responsible for the more spam than any other country (28.4 per cent) with South Korea (5.2 per cent) and China/Hong Kong (4.9 per cent) following, according to the results which were collated from spam messages caught in the company’s own ‘spam traps’.

“Yet again the US relayed more spam than any other nation, accounting for a massive 28.4 percent – meaning that almost one in three of all the world’s spam emails is being sent through a compromised US computer,” said Sophos.

Australia and New Zealand sit in 37th (0.4 per cent) and 79th (0.1 per cent) place respectively, contributing to less than one per cent of the world’s spam.

“It seems as though a major American spammer is arrested every other week at the moment, but despite these high-profile lawbreakers being put away, the US continues to relay far more spam than any other nation on the planet,” said Sophos senior security consultant, Carole Theriault.

“This level of activity can’t be attributed solely to the slick operations of a few cash-hungry criminals. The problem is there are thousands of spammers using many thousands of compromised zombie computers in the US.

“The only way we’re going to reduce the problem is if US authorities invest a lot more in educating computer users of the dangers, while ensuring ISPs step up their monitoring efforts to identify these compromised machines as early as possible.”

The top twelve spam-relaying countries are:

1 United States    28.4%
2 South Korea    5.2%
3 China (inc.Hong Kong)    4.9%
4 Russia    4.4%
5 Brazil    3.7%
6 France    3.6%
7 Germany    3.4%
8 Turkey    3.2%
9 Poland    2.7%
10 United Kingdom    2.4%
11 Romania    2.3%
12 Mexico    1.9%

Others 33.9%

During August 2007 Sophos identified a series of large-scale malware attacks made via spam email, with weblinks inserted into spam messages that directed recipients to malicious websites designed to infect their PCs.

A leading business application service provider has warned that Australia needs to aggregate its websites if it hopes to be able to keep its broadband infrastructure working to expectations.Building an online infrastructure that groups together content – such as MySpace with music and YouTube for video – is paramount for the new government if it hopes to compete in the worldwide internet economy, says the provider.

Hostworks, an Australian service provider for large corporations such as Network Ten, Seek and Ticketek, says that while the majority of internet content accessed by Australians comes from overseas, we need to start building a local structure that better manages websites and content.

“The critical issue is not how fast [broadband] goes into people’s houses: It is how fast it runs across the country and the speed of backbone data links for commercial service providers like Hostworks,” said Hostworks managing director, Marty Gauvin.

“This year, I spent three months trying to get a 10-gigabit data link from either Telstra or Optus. They’d say ‘sure you can have it’, but when I asked for a price, they’d say, ‘it’s not quite ready yet’.

“As a nation, we need to think about broadband more comprehensively than just the end points. If the incoming Government succeeds in fulfilling its broadband vision, it will create a massive online gridlock.”

According to Gauvin, we don’t have a backbone locally to handle the capacity of broadband content demand in the future.
Gauvin’s warning follows a recent OECD report which shows that Australia’s broadband performance is improving – and Australia is rated fourth among developed countries in per capita broadband take-up at June 2007.

“If Australia wants to succeed internationally as the online economy evolves, we need to start thinking much more innovatively. As well as building the infrastructure to support the online population we want, we need strategies to aggregate our online content to make it much more accessible and compelling,” said Gauvin.

“The new government has an opportunity here to demonstrate real leadership.

“On the other hand, we are at the balance point: Australia’s ability to produce a content industry that is internationally effective is quite good at the moment. That said, this potential is being seriously hampered because we can’t get the bytes out there fast enough.”

Optus today held a media party in Sydney to officially launch its new wireless broadband service that operates on the 3G platform and claimed that its service was designed to rival Telstra’s NextG wireless network.