Web-savvy criminals have turned Israel into the world's highest ranking source of malicious Internet activity per user, security experts have told The Jerusalem Post.
From July through December 2006, 9 percent of all such activity could be traced back to Israel. Taiwan came next with 8%, while Poland and the US tied at 6%, according to a report issued in March by security software giant Symantec, based in Cupertino, California...
The sophistication of Israel's Internet users and its developed hi-tech sector have contributed to the high level of malicious Web activity, said Arie Danon, Symantec manager for the Mediterranean region...
Reznik chalked the high amount of criminal Internet activity here up to the fact that Israel, according to a study his company performed in February, is a large exporters of spam, accounting for approximately 2% of world junk mail in 2006...
"The figures clearly show that spammers are operating intensively in Israel on an international level" said Yaniv Barzilai, TrekIT deputy managing director of sales, referring to the TrekIT report. Although spam is not itself considered malicious by the researchers and is not necessarily illegal, the Symantec report found that it is increasingly intertwined with malicious criminal activities. [Source: The Jerusalem Post]
