Turkey has the largest number of total “bot” infections with one bot for every 1,139 internet users in the country and also contains 18.5 percent of all of the bots across the EMEA region, according to researchers at Symantec's Norton division.
Most of the affected computers resign in the cities of Istanbul and Anakara which together account for more than half of the country's population, according to the firm's interactive botnet map.
The report also found that following Turkey, the top ten countries by total bot population in descending order include, Italy, Hungary, Germany, France, Spain, the U.K., Poland, Russia, and Israel.
“The size of a bot population can depend on many factors, but markets and cities where there has been a recent uptick in high-speed, Internet connected devices certainly creates new, lucrative sources of bandwidth for cybercriminals to compromise,” Nick Shaw, Vice President and General Manager of Norton in EMEA said in the press release. “The second piece of the puzzle is consumer devices that lack basic security and are easy to infect.”
When ordered by bot density, the report found that Hungary topped the list with one bot for every 393 internet users, followed by Monaco, Andorra, Israel, Turkey, Latvia, Kuwait, Italy, Cyprus, and Poland.
Paul Wood, head of cybersecurity research at Symantec, said in the release that it's important to remember that where a bot resides isn't indicative of where its controlling cybercriminal may live.
“Botnets are global in nature, and an infected device in Europe could contribute to an attack in Asia, controlled by a cybercriminal in North America,” Wood said. “We'd probably have bots attacking from the Antarctic if there was more bandwidth there.”
