Each month the Anti-Phishing Working Group offers statistics on phishing activities. Beside quantitative aspects of the threat, APWG offers some numbers regarding countries that host phishing and crimeware-spreading Web sites. The following charts show the monthly evolution in this data from January 2006 through February 2007.

In the first graph, we can see that the United States is at the top of countries hosting mirror sites. Two other countries, easily surpassing the 10 percent threshold, are China and the Republic of Korea. Russia is absent from this Top 10. (Pardon my French on the dates. )

APWG offers a second geographical ranking of countries hosting crimeware sites. There, too, the United States leads the way. Note, however, the strong presence of Russia during mid-2006, and then the significant rise by China at the start of this year.

Analysts explain that China is on track to become the largest Internet-using country, and the millions of Chinese discovering life online are choice targets for some of their fellow citizens. But just as with spam and doubtful offers of medications, the threat crosses all borders.