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The study by Sophos reveals that Russia is now sending out 8.3% of the world's spam, equivalent to one in twelve junk emails arriving in inboxes.

The percentage has almost doubled in the last six months, the largest increase of any nation on the survey.

"Russia is becoming more computer literate, broadband is expanding, electricity is getting cheaper so people are leaving their machines on, but people just aren't being educated on the dangers," says Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos. "That's making them easy targets for

The increase has caused the country to climb from fourth place to second in the Sophos spam charts in the last three months, overtaking China and South Korea, which both recorded minor dips in traffic.

"South Korea especially is really tech savvy, and they have a lot of government groups trying to educate users about spam, same with China," explains Theriault.

However, the increase is still dwarfed by the United States which remains the world's largest distributor of spam, accounting for 21.3% of all sent spam, or one in five spam messages.

However, at the rate Russia is increasing Theriault believes the two countries could be relaying the same amount of spam by the end of the year.

The findings will be unwelcome news for Eugene Kaspersky, found of Kaspersky lab, who recently hit out at the Western perception of Russia as a a haven for cybercriminals.