Hackers are after your money, warns Symantec

The United States came in as the most productive country of hacker activity again, as it has all the years the report has been carried out, said Donovan, with 37 percent of attacks sourced from the country. Despite its number one position, the statistic represents a drop from 58 percent in the previous six months for US hacker activity.

Hacker activity sourced to Australia reportedly increased in the past report period, to 4.8 percent of the total.

Donavan said although Australia's percent of worldwide hacker activity is very small, the figures have steadily increased across the last three reports.

"It was 1.3 percent, then 2.6 percent in the last report and now 4.8 percent in this report," he said, adding that figure points to the "last known source of the attack" not necessarily the original source.

Symantec said malicious code also increased by more than 4.5 times the number it was in the same period in 2003, equating to over 4,496 new Windows viruses and worms, with most aimed at the Win32 operating system.

"Peer-to-peer services (P2P), Internet relay chat (IRC), and network file-sharing continue to be popular propagation vectors for worms and other malicious code," the company said. "Adware is becoming more problematic, making up six of the top 50 malicious code submissions."

Donovan predicts that phishing and spam will increase by the next report, and open-source software, such as Linux, will become a bigger target on the hacker agenda.

"We're seeing an attempt in exploiting Linux environment and as it becomes more widely deployed it will become more of a target," he said.

Donovan adds that spyware and viruses targeting portable and Bluetooth devices will also become more prevalent.

ZDNet Australia's Abby Dinham reported from Sydney. For more coverage from ZDNet Australia, click here.