New research has suggested that almost a third of all internet attacks have originated from the US and China.

Managed services company Akamai has published the first of its State of the Internet reports that it intends to publish quarterly, which noted that in the first quarter of 2008 internet attacks were generated from 125 different countries.

Despite the global nature of the threat, Secure Computing Magazine reports that thirty per cent of the attacks emanated from the China and the US.

Of 23 unique ports targeted by internet attacks, port 135, which is used to make remote procedure calls on Microsoft operating systems, accounted for 30 per cent of all attacks.

The report notes: "The highest levels of attack traffic are from ports targeted by worms, viruses and bots that spread across the Internet several years ago."

In May, Bigmouthmedia announced that the number of phishing email attacks used to try and trick customer into handing over their Google AdWords account login details increased by 240 per cent in April 2008 in comparison to the monthly average for 2007.