The old saying that everything is bigger in Texas unfortunately also holds true when it comes to the number of malware infected computers.
| Top 10 most infected cities Houston – 60,801 Chicago – 49,147 Phoenix – 42,983 Denver – 39,711 San Antonio – 39,646 Dallas – 37,630 Los Angeles – 34,050 Las Vegas – 31,836 Minneapolis, Minn. – 28,517 Charlotte, N.C. – 27,092 |
A recent study by Webroot found that Texas' biggest city Houston with 60,801 has more computers infected with malware than any other U.S. metropolitan area. A somewhat distant second was Chicago followed by Phoenix. Webroot was not exactly sure of the reason Houston took first place, but David Dufour, the firm's senior director of engineering believes it has to do with oil.
“It can be tough to correlate exactly why Houston topped the list over other cities. However the concentration oil and gas and petrochemical manufacturing facilities that house sensitive information may play a part in why hackers would want to be on devices in the greater Houston area,” he said.
The study covers from 2014-2016 and primarily looked at consumer Mac and PC endpoints, not mobile devices. This is the first time Webroot conducted the study.
