May 18, 2006: China has overtaken the United States as the chief source of malware (Internet based viruses and worms used to commit crimes). The latest surveys show over 40 percent of malware coming from China, versus less than twenty percent from the United States. A year ago, the United States was the major source of these nasties. This does not mean that Chinese programmers and spammers are creating and transmitting all this stuff. Many spammers route their spam and phishing attacks through China because security, and legal prohibitions, are more lax there. The Chinese are more concerned with keeping their citizens away from Internet content the government considers "anti-Chinese" (that is, makes the Chinese government look bad.) The rest of the world is putting increasing pressure on the Chinese to make life harder for spammers. But as long as the spammers concentrate on everyone but the Chinese, nothing much is going to happen. Most spammers direct their attacks at Americans and other people in the West. Go where the money is. Also, more aggressive prosecution of spammers in the United States is forcing spammers to look for a safer place to operate from.