With reports of cybercrime flying around the place, most people associate it with China and Brazil, but a recent study shows that a huge proportion of attacks originate from good ‘ole US of A

SecureWorks, a security firm, has counted 20.6 million attacks against its customers that came from inside American borders so far this year. China ranked second in the world with just 7.7 million, with Brazil and South Korea lagging in third and fourth with 166,987 and 162,298 respectively – better luck next year huh guys…

The findings will have implications for companies trying to fend off denial-of-service attacks and other net-based assaults. Don Jackson, SecureWorks’s director of threat intelligence (awesome job title) said that in August, when Russia invaded Georgia, many Georgian IT staff members tried blocking off Russian IP addresses from their networks, but in the end they were hacked anyway by computers from Turkey and the US.

Whereas the majority of compromised machines in the US are under the control of people out with the country, that is not the case in China. There are reports of entire university networks that are under the control of hackers, with the help of insiders.

In related news, Chinese activists have started targeting the websites of several of the companies involved in the recent baby milk scandal. Targets reportedly include the Sanlu Milk Company and the Mongolian Milk Corporation. Posts on their website read as follows:

“When an infant with kidney stones lies weeping in a hospital bed, can the factory owners intuitively sense the condemnation?”

“In order to gain profit you have gone so far as to devastate these young lives!”