Provided by CommunityDNS, the information in this post consists of news items in the security-based Internet community.

Mideast, Africa mobile broadband to explode: report

With the Middle East having the potential for 17 million mobile broadband subscribers and Africa having the potential for 24 million mobile broadband users, the two regions could boast close to 40 million subscribers by 2011, up from today’s 2.5 million. Key to the growth are lower broadband user rates. Achieving lower prices rests upon providing greater capacity. In Africa 10 undersea cables are either in the planning stages or under construction.

Click here for more information.

US named as top spam-producing country

Producing 15.6% of all spam received between April and June of 2009, the US has the distinction of the world’s largest producer of spam e-mails. Brazil followed with 11.1% and Turkey with 5.2%. Russia, which last year ranked second, now ranks 9th with 3.2% of spam coming from that country.

Click here for more information.

Swine flu malware poses as pig plaque update

Traditionally posing as information regarding where people can purchase phony pharmaceuticals the recent information circulating about the Swine flu results in infecting users with malware. Appearing like a Word document, this executable delivers a Trojan that contains backdoor and keylogger functionality.

Click here for more information.

GAO: Many Federal Agencies Still Don’t Meet Security Standards

Three years after releasing recommendations, most of the 24 US government’s key civilian agencies are still falling short of recommended security guidelines. In 2006 the number of reports from federal agencies to US-CERT was 5,503. In 2008 the number had jumped to 16,843; almost a 200% increase. More than 1/3 are still under investigation.

14% of the known sources was caused by malicious code while 12% of the breaches were caused by scans, probes or other attempted access by external hackers.

Click here for more information.

Chinese news sites go down after reports on gov’t scandal

Sites for two of China’s most popular technology news sites were taken offline after reporting an apparent scandal linking the son of China’s president to a corrupt African deal. When the sites returned several hours later the content regarding such reports had been removed.

Click here for more information.