Myanmar No. 1 source of Web attacks
Myanmar has become the No. 1 source of Web attack traffic worldwide as the Asian country makes its debut in a cyberthreat index covering the first quarter of 2011, according to new report.
Released Wednesday, the latest edition of Akamai's quarterly "State of the Internet report" noted that Myanmar's sudden appearance at the top of the chart was "certainly unusual". This was the first time the country placed in the ranking, which has a four-year history, noted the content network delivery provider. It added that the attacks from Myanmar seemed related to attack traffic in late-February and early-March which targeted port 80.
According to Akamai, Myanmar accounted for 13 percent of the observed attack traffic despite only targeting 25 unique ports, among which 45 percent of the attack were targeted at port 80. In contrast, the United States--ranked No. 2--accounted for 10 percent of attack traffic with tens of thousands of targeted ports. Attack activities from the U.S. were strongly indicative of general port scanning and not specifically-targeted attacks, said the company.
Compared to the previous quarter, Taiwan dropped one rank to No. 3, accounting for 9.1 percent of global attack traffic. Other Asia-Pacific economies in the top 10 chart were China at No.5 with 6.4 percent, India at No.7 with 3.8 percent, and Hong Kong at No. 8 with 3.3 percent.
At the continental level, the Asia-Pacific region accounted for nearly half of the observed attack traffic worldwide, said Akamai.
In the top 10 ranking for attacks from mobile networks, two Asia-Pacific markets made it to the charts with Malaysia at No. 3 with 7.7 percent of traffic, while Australia ranked in at No. 4 with 7.2 percent.
Akamai noted that the attacks from mobile networks were likely from infected PC-type clients connected to wireless networks using mobile broadband technologies, and not by infected smartphones or similar mobile-connected devices.
Aside from Web attacks, the report also ranked countries with the fastest Internet connection. Similar to last quarter, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan remained the top 3 fastest countries, and were the only three Asian economies to make the top 10 list.