McAfee has published an interesting report which revealed that the United States is home to more botnets than Russia and China combined. In the meanwhile, botnets are normally associated with 3rd-world countries that have weak regulatory frameworks and a lot of loopholes for money laundering.




Overall, 631 botnet control servers were found in the United States. This was hardly surprising because the country remains the Mecca for cheap hosting. In the meantime, the US is followed by the British Virgin Islands, with 237 servers. Despite population of just 27,000, the small Caribbean nation features the unflattering distinction of hosting more botnet servers per capita than any other place: one per 110 residents. Anyway, this is the Caribbean, and botnets seem to be the new privateers.

The Netherlands took the third line in the list with its 154 servers. Russia came the forth (125 servers) and Germany the fifth (95 servers). The leaders are followed by Korea with 81 botnet servers and Switzerland with 77 servers.

Australia also got on the list with its 83 antipode botnet servers, while China hosts only 48. Despite all the bad press that China gets for malware, botnets and suspected hacker attacks, it’s a very low figure, a far cry from the terracotta cyber army some American media outlets would have people fear. Finally, Canada holds the 10th place and hosts 38 botnets.

In the meantime, clusters of botnet servers can also be seen in other parts of the world, including the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. The less popular place for botnet servers is South America, but the only continent having no botnet servers turns out to be Antarctica.