This compares with just 7.3% of attacks originating from the US, says the report, noting that, whilst the list of countries/regions comprising the top five sources for attacks remained constant from the third quarter, there was a clear shift in the rankings.
Interestingly, when looking at the attack traffic from just mobile network providers, Akamai says that Italy remained in the top spot, responsible for 30% of the observed attack traffic in the fourth quarter.
Another interesting trend identified in the report is that mobile consumption and connectivity speeds continued to increase in the fourth quarter.
Of the 105 mobile providers surveyed by Akamai, 62 experienced an increase in average data consumption delivered by Akamai over the prior quarter and 89 providers saw consumption increase year-over-year.
According to the IP services firm, looking at average peak connection speeds amongst the 105 providers, yearly growth was generally strong, with average peak connection speeds more than doubling at over 30 providers, and with 96 total providers showing year-over-year growth.
The fact that the US is slipping in the malicious attack stakes may have something to do with the fact that the report logged only eight US cities as being in the top 100 in terms of the speed of connectivity to the internet, Infosecurity notes.
The report is based on data collected from Akamai's internet platform, which claims to deliver up to 30% of the world's web traffic, and is made up of over 84,000 servers in 72 countries.