Symantec's Global Internet Security Threat Report this year for the first time tracked malicious traffic on ISP networks by owned IP addresses. While the U.S. had two ISPs in the top ten, Canadian telco Bell Canada led all Canadian ISPs when it comes to malicious network traffic volume (17%). While Symantec qualified the findings by noting the ranking likely comes from being the largest Canadian ISP, Bell Canada got a little testy when asked about the study by the Canadian Press:Before Mr. Laszlo raises his public relations dukes, he'll be happy to know that Bell Canada isn't even in the top ten, globally. The same can't be said for U.S. companies Verizon and Time Warner (AOL), who find their networks at number eight and ten respectively (both "own" 2% of global malicious traffic). Telecom Italia got the dubious distinction of being the ISP with the most malicious traffic on its network. These top ten account for 24% of all global broadband subscribers.

The other good news for Canadians is that the report shows the country is seventh in overall malicious traffic, the top spot going to their noisy neighbors to the south (no, not Mexico). The United States accounted for 30% of all malicious traffic. The U.S. also had the most bot-infected computers, accounting for 14 percent of the global total, a jump of 13 percent since the first half of 2007.

Symantec's report, the thirteenth they've published, says they detected 711,912 new code threats in 2007, compared to 125,243 in 2006 – a modest increase of 468 percent. Granted, a company in the business of selling AV products has a vested interest in making the Internet look as scary as possible, but the findings are definitely interesting and worth a read.