Symantec names Shaoxing, China as world's malware capital

It's not the sort of title any city's looking for, but Symantec has now given Shaoxing, China the dubious honor of being the world's malware capital, saying that it accounts for more targeted attacks than any other city. In fact, the company found that while close to 30 percent of all malicious attacks came from China (making it the number one country), 21.3 percent came just from Shaoxing. It was followed by Taipei at 16.5 percent, and London at 14.8 percent. Following China in the country rankings is Romania with 21.1 percent of attempted attacks (most of those are said to be commercial fraud), and the United States at 13.8 percent. That's actually just part of a larger report by Symantec's MessageLabs division, which details everything from the most common types of email attachments (.XLS and .DOC are neck and neck for the lead) to the percentage of emails that contain a virus of phishing attack (one in 358.3 and one in 513.7, respectively). Dive into the PDF linked below for the complete details.

The trends to watch in 2010 according to security

Symantec:

- Reputation-based security will take over from malware signature and behaviour analysis now that “malicious programs are being created at a higher rate than good programs”.

- Social engineering will become the primary attack vector with attackers going directly to the end user, bypassing computer vulnerabilities

- Rogue security software vendors will escalate their efforts by high-jacking users' computers for ransom

- Social networking third-party apps will be targeted as social networks tighten their own security

- Windows 7 will be targeted as it gains wider adoption

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McAfee:

- Security technology innovation will move to the cloud

- White listing will become more prevalent

- Flash worms will hit instant messaging

- Mac users will be attacked

- Network and endpoint security will converge and be managed through one console