Italy may have won the soccer World Cup in a thrilling final yesterday, but they did not even make it through to the group matches as far as the Malware World Cup is concerned. Webroot Software Inc. has just released details of global average malware infection rates during June 2006 to members of the press. Rather than waste this opportunity to make serious comment about infection trends and create a geographical map of malware distribution, why not put it in World Cup terms I thought? So I have.

OK, let us start with the knockout rounds where every country competes to see which can be the most infected in each of four categories: spyware, adware, Trojans and system monitors. The results pan out as follows:

Spyware (showing average number of spies per PC scanned)

1. Dominican Republic (43.643)
2. Ecuador (35.905)
3. Lithuania (35.516)
4. Iceland (32.406)
5. Slovenia (31.937)
6. Latvia (30.577)
7. USA (30.489)
8. United Kingdom (28.75)
9. Ireland (28.542)
10. Venezuela (26.297)

Adware (showing average number of spies per PC scanned)

1. Dominican Republic (6.495)
2. Slovenia (5.945)
3. Ecuador (5.52)
4. Puerto Rico (4.535)
5. Iceland (4.463)
6. Israel (4.262)
7. Colombia (4.252)
8. Croatia (4.144)
9. Norway (4.093)
10. Canada (3.978)

Trojans (showing infection rates per 1000 PCs)

1. Slovenia (1103)
2. Ecuador (1057)
3. Croatia (972)
4. Lithuania (761)
5. Portugal (733)
6. Norway (728)
7. Poland (692)
8. Indonesia (683)
9. Sweden (678)
10. Venezuela (675)

System monitors (showing infection rates per 1000 PCs)

1. Estonia (276)
2. Jordan (267)
3. Iran (233)
4. Peru (220)
5. Albania (194)
6. Latvia (177)
7. Croatia (166)
8. Brazil (156)
9. Macedonia (137)
10. Russian Federation (125)

Using the tried and trusted method of awarding 10 points for a top placing down to 1 point for coming in 10th, I can reveal that the winner of the Malware World Cup, and therefore the biggest loser in global IT security, is:

Ecuador

The final rankings were as follows:

1. Ecuador (26)
2. Slovenia (25)
3. Dominican Republic (20)
4. Croatia (15)
5. Lithuania (15)
6. Iceland (13)
7. Estonia (10)
8. Latvia (10)
9. Jordan (9)
10. Iran (8)
11. Norway (7)
12. Peru (7)
13. Puerto Rico (7)
14. Albania (6)
15. Portugal (6)
16. Israel (5)
17. Columbia (4)
18. Poland (4)
19. USA (4)
20. Brazil (3)
21. Indonesia (3)
22. UK (3)
23. Ireland (2)
24. Macedonia (2)
25. Sweden (2)
26. Venezuela (2)
27. Canada (1)
28. Russian Federation (1)