Three countries are the origin of half of all online attacks

Just three countries, the US, China and Germany, are the origin of almost half of all malicious online activity, according to Internet security firm, Symantec. The company detected more than 6 million separate 'zombies', computers controlled by malicious hackers, in the last six months of 2006, it announced.

The groups behind the attacks appear to be growing in power. Bot masters, the individuals or groups who control the zombie PCs, are rapidly increasing the size of their networks, Symantec reported. There were 29 percent more zombies in botnets, but 25 percent fewer master servers controlling them during the second half of 2006, compared to the first half of the year.

The company detected an increase in spam, particularly 'pump and dump' financial fraud. There were more than 900 phishing attacks per day, an increase of six percent from the first half.

Symantec collected this data from monitoring software installed on 40,000 PCs worldwide.
Read more at Symantec.