Monday, 28 July 2008

1 Millionth Malware Detected!

Much faster than expected, the number of malware detections on the web has reached the unfortunate 1 millionth benchmark.

According to F-Secure, the number of Trojans, backdoors, exploits and other threats has doubled since the end of 2007, growing at a rate of 2,300 new detections per day.

The security company believes this recent explosion of malware is a result of the industrialization of virus production that is the packing, encryption, and obfuscation of existing families of malware.

“Criminals are adapting and utilising enterprise level systems and code within their operations. The complexity and quality of their IT infrastructure and systems continues to increase, providing them with the power to silently flood the Internet with their menace,” says F-Secure in a statement.

“Malware-as-a-Service is another factor contributing to this benchmark. Hackers sell their services to common criminals, who in turn launch DoD attacks, issue millions of phishing emails or engage in industrial espionage.

“Furthermore we have also seen the rise of polymorph viruses leading to the explosion of malware. Malware 2.0 changes its code every time the file is executed and launches DoD attacks on virus researchers.”