The Conficker botnet was by far the largest source of online attacks on the web in the first quarter of 2009, according to web services provider Akamai.

The company's quarterly State of the Internet report found that in the first months of the year, Conficker accounted for some two-thirds of all attack traffic.

First appearing in late 2008, Conficker spread throughout the web in 2009. By March, the worm touched off a media firestorm when researchers noted that many of the infected machines were programmed to dial an instruction server on 1 April.

Though no major attack occurred, the incident earned Conficker a fair amount of notoriety among IT professionals and home computer users alike.

Of the attacks that did occur in the first quarter of the year, most were from China and the US. According to Akamai, roughly half of all internet attacks originated from one of the two countries.

Akamai also revealed its findings on broadband speeds. Much like an earlier report from analyst firm Futuresource, the company placed Japan and South Korea as the countries with the fastest broadband speed.

The company also pegged Sweden as having the fastest broadband speeds in Europe, followed by the Netherlands and Romania.