20 percent of zombies come from China

The report found that of the 157,000 new zombies identified daily, 20.65 percent of these originated from China. These zombied computers can be remotely controlled by hackers, known as "botpimps", and sold to criminal gangs to launch Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, send spam and host phishing websites.

The company looked at billions of emails throughout March and first half of April and found that the U.S. Came in second with 15.98 percent, with South Korea third on 10.2 percent.

"While the information regarding the number of new zombies per day and the percent originating from China is staggering, it's not necessarily surprising given the number of new internet users in China," said Paul Judge, chief technology officer at CipherTrust.

Judge recommended end-user education in that country to prevent computers falling under the command of hackers and criminals.

It also found that 57 percent of all spam originated in the U.S. Although this number is down from nearly 86 percent during June and July 2004, the U.S. still ranks highest in terms of spam originations. South Korea ranks second highest with 16 percent, which grew 13 percent over the past eight months.

Last week British bank LloydsTSB criticized internet users for not doing enough to protect their home computers against cyber attacks and this in turn was compromising business IT security.

www.ciphertrust.com