73% Infections in US Due to Malware, Says Microsoft Study

The latest data from Volume 8 of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIRv8) discloses that the huge amount of threats found on infected systems in the US in the second half of 2009 were malware. According to the report, 73% threats in the country are because of malware.

The Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) of Microsoft discovered malware on eight out of every 1,000 systems scanned in the US in the second half of 2009.

Some other countries with maximum infection rates detected during the same period were Turkey (20%), Brazil (18%) and Spain (17.1%). Interestingly, Saudi Arabia also emerged into the top ten with a share of 13%.

UAE had an infection rate of 5.8 systems infected for every 1,000 computers which were scanned by the MSRT. As per the analysis of Microsoft, malware dominate the threat landscape in the UAE, estimating for 82.6% of total threats found on infected systems. The prevalent malware category in the country was found to be worms (23%). These worms were found to have the capacity to propagate through mapped drives with weak or omitted passwords or by means of USB flash drives.

The report also talked of some countries that had low malware infection rates during July-December 2009. Also, the report added that UK reported only 4.1 infections for every 1,000 systems scanned during the second half of 2009 as compared to 4.9 in the first half of 2009.

Canada remained at 2.5 infected systems per 1,000 PCs scanned, a figure that has dropped gradually from 8.1 since the report started tracing these statistics in 2008. National security and privacy head with Microsoft Canada Co., Mohammad Akif, stated that the figure is quite commendable considering the world's average infection rate of 7.0. Akif said they are equivalent to one-third of the global average, as per the report by it World Canada on April 27, 2010. Akif credited this impressive figure to the several technological improvements that helped reducing infection rate in Canada.

Meanwhile, the report stated that Finland, Austria and Japan have better ranking than Canada.

Related article: “Loopholes did not cause online banking thefts”: ICBC

» SPAMfighter News - 5/8/2010