Survey: Most Malaysian PCs are 'zombies'

By JO TIMBUONG

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is one of the most prolific distributors of spam and propagators of "spam zombies" in the Asia-Pacific region, revealed a recent survey. 

It ranks No 5 as a spam distributor, among 29 countries. Topping this list is the Philippines, followed by Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Laos, according to the survey by security solutions vendor Symantec Corp. 

As a propagator of zombie machines, Malaysia is No 7 on the list. Topping it is China, followed by South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam.

These are PCs that have been compromised by hackers and used to launch spam e-mail, or phishing messages that lure computer users to mistakenly reveal personal information such as credit card details or bank account passwords.

Kannan Velayutham, a consultant for enterprise security at Symantec Malaysia, said the survey showed that 96% of computers in the country are zombie machines. 

I believe those statistics...I mean the users are from:-

- college computers
- public computers [cyber cafe]

lol