US Leads in Cyber Attacks

Before y'all start painting your faces red-white-and-blue and hollering "USA!" what everyone is talking about is the US is the source of most of the cyber attacks seen in the world.

20 million attacks came from computers in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Now before the Euros get all snotty, this doesn't mean that the attackers are in the US. Some are, of course, but there are an awful lot in eastern Europe and China, among other places. So what gives?

As I posted in the early days of this blog:

So, everything is vulnerable. Attackers can pretty much get anywhere they want to , if they're patient and really want to - the smart ones can, at least. The rest of us face a never ending Hobbesian Choice of patch and pray.

Computers in Lima, Peru are no more secure than computers in Poughkeepsie. So why are there so many infected ("bot") computers here?

Follow the money. If you're Dr. Evil, do you try to scam users in a nation of 300 million well-off computer owners who all speak the same language, or do you go after owners in much poorer countries, where lots of different languages are spoken? We're a target rich environment, probably the biggest, wealthiest target out there.

Good day. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Clement Okon, Deputy Energy Minister ....

So don't let anyone tell you that we're slacking off on security here in the good ol' US of A. Well, we are. But everyone else is, too. We're just a bigger, more interesting target than they are.