Spam is a vector for cybercrime and commonly legally prohibited. Why do certain national jurisdictions produce a\nhigher percentage of spam than others despite its prohibition? Why do some countries have a higher percentage of\nsystems acting as spambots compared to other countries? We begin to answer there questions by conducting a\ncross-country empirical analysis of economic factors that correlate with the prevalence of spam and associated\nbotnets. The economic factors under consideration are grounded in traditional theories of crime offline, as well as\nprior research in security economics. We found that more than 50% of spam can be attributed to having originated\nfrom merely seven countries, indicating that deterrence through policy is both feasible and economically rational. As\nexpected, higher Internet adoption is correlated with higher percentage of spam from a country. Counterintuitively,\nInternet adoption is also positively correlated with the percentage of infected machines.
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