Countries making a sudden leap from dial-up to broadband access are most at risk of playing unwitting host for attack traffic, said Akamai’s chief security officer Andy Ellis.
Ellis cited results from Akamai's state of the Internet report for Q4 2010, which showed Russia, Taiwan, Brazil and China to be the top four countries from which attack traffic generated.
Ellis said in an interview with TelecomAsia that machines most vulnerable to being zombies usually lay in markets where large scale broadband deployments and the abundance of connectivity overshadowed the need for security.
Russia accounted for 10% of all attack traffic observed for the quarter, while the Asia Pacific front saw Taiwan and China combined account for close to 15% of malicious traffic.
“We’re referring to users who have traditionally not lived in an environment where security comes to the forefront,” said Ellis. “Users who don’t patch and who don’t pay attention to the fact that their hard drive is swapping all the time are prime targets for attackers.”
Despite enjoying some of the world’s highest broadband speeds, countries such as Japan and Korea were not as susceptible as both markets embarked on a more gradual adoption of high-speed broadband, added Ellis, noting the last major DDoS to hit Korea occurred in 2009.