US and China accused over web attacks

Responsible for 30%

2 June 2008 10:06 GMT / By Katie Scott

The US and China have been named and shamed in a new report on internet safety.

According to the Akami State of the Internet report, three in ten internet attacks originates from either China or the US of A.

The team behind the report observed attacks from 125 different countries.

It found that the top 10 countries in the list were responsible for three quarters of all internet attacks, and the majority of these come from Asia or South America.

The UK, however, wasn't in the top ten.

And the main target of the attacks - Windows - with 30% of the attacks attempting to exploit Port 135, which is used for remote procedure calls in the Microsoft OS.

"One interesting observation about the ports that see the highest levels of attack traffic is that they were targeted by worms, viruses, and bots that spread across the internet several years ago", the report states.

"While that's not to say that there are not any current pieces of malware that attack these ports, it may point to a large pool of Microsoft Windows-based systems that are insufficiently maintained, and remain unpatched years after these attacks peaked and were initially mitigated with updated software."