Botnet Growth Worldwide

Several organizations monitor the growth of compromised systems and botnet growth. According to McAfee “Cybercriminals have taken control of almost 12 million new IP addresses in Q1 2009, a 50 percent increase over the previous quarter. The United States is now home to the largest percentage of botnet-infected computers, hosting 18 percent of all “zombie” machines.”

Microsoft has some graphics that illustrate some of the same points although their data varies.

The map illustrates the infection rates of locations around the world, expressed in a metric called CCM that represents the number of computers cleaned per thousand executions of the Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Perimeter eSecurity’s research seems to more closely match the findings of Microsoft.