[gaijin]

virus originate from? Where (which country) do most computer virus originate from?Any references would be great.Thanks

[Buffy C]

Well, I would say the United States, b/c there are more computers per person, thus more hackers, spammers, and virus creaters.

[Dirac]

think every place in the world except for the antarctic.... nah, probably there's a hacker even there.

[D L]

"Enjoy the beaches of Tokelau, however, beware the South Pacific island nation's Web sites."That's the message from security software company McAfee, which released a survey Monday ranking the world's most dangerous Web addresses. McAfee says more than 10% of all Web sites registered out of Tokelau, identifiable by the ".tk" at the end of their Web address, will expose users to spam, viruses and spyware.McAfee's survey was based on data from SiteAdvisor, a Boston-based company that the security company bought last April. SiteAdvisor's free online tool assigns Web sites a safety score based on whether they send spam, infect surfers with malicious programs or deliver excessive pop-up ads.The new survey distinguishes sites based on their domain registration, which shows up as the last two or three letters in a Web address: Brazilian sites, for instances, end in ".br", while sites registered by academic groups tend to end in ".edu". McAfee says it looked at 8.1 million heavily trafficked Web sites registered at 265 different domains.The result is a unique travel guide for Web surfers. Among larger countries, Romania and Russia topped the most dangerous list, with 5.6% and 4.5% of their sites ranked as risky. The safest countries were Ireland and Finland, which both had risk factors of 0.1%.But a site's registration only tells users so much. In fact, it may not say much at all: Just about anyone can register any Web site with any domain name. And the most common domain name is one of the riskiest: About 6% of ".com" domains are questionable, McAfee says. The riskiest generic domain name of all is ".info"; sites there have a 7.5% chance of being dangerous.What makes a domain more appealing to the Web's evil-doers? Price and anonymity. Spammers must constantly change domains to avoid filtering and blacklisting by e-mail service providers, anti-spam programs and Internet service providers. Registration costs, while often less then $10 a site, quickly multiply. That's why Tokelau, which gives out domains for free, may be a popular hideout for dubious sites.The World's Riskiest Web Domains:No. 1: Tokelau (.tk)No. 2: Information (.info)No. 3: Samoa (.ws)No. 4: Romania (.ro)No. 5: Commercial (.com)No. 6: Business (.biz)No. 7: Russia (.ru)No. 8: Network (.net)No. 9: Families and Individuals (.name)No. 10: Slovakia (.sk)

[Mr Muggles]

I would guess its a toss up between USA and eastern Europe,sorry cant find any references

[crimsonc]

Middle East, Asia and Russia mainly. Of course virus's come out of other countries and America could be up in the top 10 but the majority comes from the above regions.

I don't know why to be honest, partially it's money, partially it's to see if they can. Sometimes (but rarely) it's religious or politically motivated.

There have been reported cases of large companies putting out media on file sharing networks with virus's on, but again it's not common and if it is you don't know who it was.