Guess which country leads the world in botnets?

Botnets are frequently in the news, most recently with Red October. Many of us think, perhaps smugly, that these things are based in locations like China and Russia, but the truth is, while some of the computers themselves may be there, these massive, distributed networks are being controlled from a location much closer to home for many of us -- the United States.

Benjamin Cruz of McAfee reports that the United States not only leads the world in this category, but has more than double the number of Russia and China combined. In fact, the two nations we frequently blame for attacks fall into fourth and tenth place on the list that Cruz published. British Virgin Islands and the Netherlands trail the United States, respectively.

How does McAfee know this? Cruz explains that "with millions of McAfee endpoints and network security appliances sending information to McAfee Global Threat Intelligence (GTI) in the cloud, coupled with a vast collection of malicious binary and proactive research, McAfee Labs has a clear view of botnet threats around the world".