Digital Trends

The US leads the world as a source of computer attacks, according to a new study, far ahead of China.

The US likes to be a world leader, but this is one area where it would rather not get a gold medal – computer attacks. But a new study from SecureWorks shows that the country is way out front of the rest of the world in the field, with 20.6 million attempted attacks, far outpacing China, which had 7.7 million.

That doesn’t mean the US is packed with malicious hackers. It simply means that a lot of computers have very weak security.
Hunter King, security researcher for SecureWorks, said:

“We believe these statistics are significant because it clearly shows that the United States and China have a lot of vulnerable computers that have been compromised and are being used as bots to launch cyber attacks.”

“This should be a warning to organizations and personal computer users that, not only are they putting their computers and networks at risk by not securing them, but they are actually providing these cyber criminals with a platform from which to compromise other computers.”

Rounding out the top ten are Brazil, South Korea, Poland, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, Germany and Canada.