Symantec: USA is a world leader in harmful activity in internet.

United States takes first place in the world in spreading harmful code and hacker activity, say Symantec experts in the semi-annual â€œReport on the internet security threats.â€ The third part of all attacks in the second half of 2006ware made from USA. The second place belongs to China, far behind America, with each 10th harmful action held form this eastern country. And on the third place comes Germany with the result of 7%. The United States is also a leader in the number of active-botnets. 59% letters sent form USA is spam. In the second half of 2005 this figure was 54%. Most of the spam is aiming to increase stock prices, or various types of fraudulent schemes. In the United States, too, Most part of all servers of clandestine economics, that steal data are situated in the USA as well. Typically, these servers act from 2 hours to 2 weeks. Wild outburst of computer crime feeds competition among groups and individuals acting in the underground: thus, details of other people's credit cards can be purchased for only $1 and complete data on the individual, including the number of his bank account, social security, credit cards, for $ 14. Information for the report came from 120 million computers equipped with protective products, as well as form 2 million â€œtrapâ€ e-mail addresses. The number of zombie computers in the second half a year compared to the first rose by 29% to 6 million. At the same time, the number of servers to which they are connected, fell by about a quarter to 4,700. Researchers believe that this is the evidence of the greater centralization and improving the effectiveness of the hackers. 26% of all zombie computers are situated in China â€“ it is the highest number in the world. As for browsers, Internet Explorer accounted 77% of attacks through infected pages. It is the first time, when Symantec, explores the origin of the attacks by countries. But it is unlikely, however, that this information reflects hackers activity emanating from each country: as servers in the United States are used from hackers by many countries. According to Symantec, in the current semester users should expect an increasing number of attacks against Vista with the growth of its popularity, and phishers will focus on the theft of card access to online games whose virtual currency and goods can be sold on the internet-auctions for real money, reported by the press agency Associated Press.