CYBERSPACE — It almost sounds like the Cold War when people talk about cyber attacks, with nations like China and Russia leading the list of accused suspects. Guess what? Although the United States may import nearly everything except air, it’s the world’s major exporter of cyber attacks!According to Net-Security.org, the location of computers responsible for malicious computer assaults against its clients during 2008 were published by SecureWorks – and the United States came out on top.

With an impressive 20.6 million attempts to break, enter, and stir up some trouble to its credit, it left China, its closest competitor, in far flung second place with a measly 7.7 million tries.

Interestingly enough for the Cold War metaphor, Russia lags behind Brazil (166,987 attempts), South Korea (162,289 attempts), Poland (153,205 attempts) and Japan (142,346 attempts) with a modest 130,572 stabs at computers associated with SecureWorks clients.

Taiwan followed with a mere 124,997 tries that still put it ahead of underachieving German (110,493) and hardly-even-trying Canada (107,483).

Avoiding attacks is not as hard as many may think, if computer users will exercise a few simple security housekeeping measures, such as keeping both browsers and operating systems up to date while running current versions of antivirus and antispyware software. Avoiding suspicious or questionably websites, and not clicking on unexpected attachments or unverified links will also limit the opportunity for outside influences to gain control of personal and business computers.

Alas for IT professionals that have relied upon blocking foreign IP addresses, it would appear likely that the greatest threat comes from within the country’s own borders.

SecureWorks proposes that companies instead develop a black list of inbound IP addresses known to be malicious, as well as block of restrict outbound messages to countries known for their criminal activity. By doing so, the chances of zombie networks being set up within the states by a foreign entity should be greatly decreased.