Akamai: China and U.S. Lead in Net Attacks

Akamai's first "State of the Internet" quarterly report finds China and the U.S. account for about 30 percent of Internet attack traffic...but the U.S. lags behind others in broadband penetration.

Internet distribution company Akamai has issued the first of what it claims will be an ongoing series of State of the Internet reports. (Registration required to view the full text.) In the report, the company finds that during the first quarter of 2008, China and the United States accounted for about 30 percent of all “attack traffic” on the Internet—but, surprisingly, a lot of that traffic was directed at network ports and services that haven’t had major vulnerabilities for several years, suggesting the number of unpatched, still-vulnerable Windows systems connected to the Internet worldwide is still significant.

The company also collected data from its worldwide service network to examine Internet usage, and finds that the United States still lags behind many other countries in terms of broadband penetration—and, moreover, that the availability of broadband within the United States varies greatly by location. In terms of “high broadband”—connections of 5 Mbps or more—the U.S. came in seventh on the list of broadband-connected nations, with nations like South Korea and Japan having more than double the estimated 20 percent penetration in the United States. But when the bar is lowered to broadband of 2 Mbps, South Korea managed a 93 percent penetration, with Belgium and Switzerland as close runners-up. The United States ranked 24th, with 62 percent of broadband users having connections over 2 Mbps.

Within the United States, ironically, Washington State came in almost dead last, with 21 percent of the state’s connections under 256 Kbps—ironic for a state that hosts tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Boeing. Delaware, Rhode Island, New York, and Oklahoma had, on average, the highest penetration of broadband speeds over 5 Mbps.