US Reigns As Most Bot-Infected Country

Trailrunner7 writes "The US has by far the highest number of bot-infected computers of any country in the world, with nearly four times as many infected PCs as the country in second place, Brazil, according to a new report by Microsoft. The quarterly report on malicious software and Internet attacks shows that while some of the major botnets have been curtailed in recent months, the networks of infected PCs still represent a huge threat."

I read the TFA

[OzPeter]

But after a short glance I still couldn't see if this is a "per computer" basis for the country or simply a "total pwned" basis.

Quick Question

[Monkeedude1212]

How many computers total are in the US compared to other countries of the world?

Simple counts don't cut it in the real world of statistics.

I bet 100% of Canadian computers could be infected and we still might not beat out the US. Considering the Population of California alone is greater than our national population (or at least it was last time I checked).

True measure

[__aagmrb7289]

This report is not a good measure of anything. It only counts botnets cleaned by Microsoft's program, and it doesn't talk about infections per capita. It measures nothing, and is pretty close to useless. Yay. Okay, that's not totally fair - there is useful information in it. But the article has very little of that information, and the summary has none of it. Now, yay.

Re:Quick Question

[tacarat]

Real statistics don't cut it in the world of headlines.

Numbers...

[citoxE]

The reason more Americans are infected is because of the sheer amount of computers we have. As others have noted, it's really the percentage per 1000 that are infected that really count. I would bet that most people nowadays have more than one PC in their home, so the statistics are skewed if no one is playing by the same rules.

Re:Quick Question

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet 100% of Canadian computers could be infected and we still might not beat out the US

Why didn't that sentence confuse you?

Re:Quick Question

[martin-boundary]

Simple counts don't cut it in the real world of statistics.

Huh? It entirely depends on what the statistics are being used for. Simple counts are useful when the amount of activity is proportional to the population size.

For example, with a botnet, it's the absolute number of bots that matters, because the bots in a botnet are interchangeable (it doesn't matter where they're located, or what processor they're running, etc).

So if you're going to propose botnet solutions on a per country basis, then you want to know which country has the greatest number of active bots, not the country which has the greatest percentage of infectected computers.

US Reigns As Most Bot-Infected Country on Web

[BudAaron]

So can someone explain why this is news? Sounds more like it reflects the number of computers in the country!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:National Reformat Day

[Merls the Sneaky]

Too bad, as a species, we don't seem capable of this kind of synchronization.

Actually as a species we are quite capable of synchronisation, the problem is people only synchronise of trivial bullshit EG: sporting events.

Re:True measure

[Arrogant-Bastard]

Absolutely true -- any estimate of total botnet populations that isn't in excess of 100 million can safely be disregarded as the product of either (a) poor methodology or (b) creative public relations.

Moreover, since these statistics are allegedly based on the number supposedly cleaned up, they've severely biased toward "systems which happen to have the appropriate cleanup tool installed AND which happen to have malware that the cleanup tool knows about". Given that the bad guys have copies of the cleanup tool as well, it's certain that they've undertaken significant engineering effort to craft their malware to avoid it.

The only things we really know about bots at this point are (a) they're already epidemic (b) there are more every day (c) no effective countermeasure exists (d) botnet disruption does not remediate bots (e) botnet C&C mechanisms are improving continuously and (f) we are approaching the point in time where any Windows system, chosen randomly, will have a 50-50 chance of being a bot.