First Half of 2010 Records More Than Million New Viruses

As per the semi-annual security report of a German security vendor G Data, the amount of new malware applications made a record for H1-2010 with more than a million registered in just six months alone.

The report reveals that during H1-2010, G Data detected 1,017,208 new malware, an increase of 51% over the H1-2009. Strong growth should result in the emergence of more than 2 Million new malicious codes in the complete 2010.

According to the data, the Trojans dominated the top five types of malware with a rate of 42.6%. However, malware in terms of downloader and dropper captured second position with a rate of 20.4%.

During the last six months, many new categories of spyware emerged to the point that 12.8% of new kinds of malware, for instance, keyloggers or banking trojans. spyware was the fastest emerging category with respect to all other types of malware.

Furthermore, the rate of backdoor declined since the last half of 2009 and ranked fourth with 12%. Cyber criminals employ these viruses to acquire remote access to systems. The last rank was acquired by the worms in the top 5 with 53,609 units.

Further, it was found that out of millions of malwares, 99.4% were written to attack the Windows Operating System.

Ralf Benzmüller, Head of G SecurityLabs Data, said that the actual figures were shocking. The malware industry had published information about four new viruses every minute in the past six months. He further said that they expect that the numbers would exceed the target of 2 Millions in the second half of the year.

The report also remarks that nearly 51% Germans use the Internet social network such as Xing (Nielsen) or Facebook. This immense popularity unluckily tempts cyber criminals who are abusing these networks to attack users.

Ralf Benzmüller further said that cybercriminals mainly attacked the social networks and their users. It was an objective that could give significant outcomes of the large number of subscribers. The security infringements and data loss for which diverse platforms have gained attention in the past are making things even more simpler for cybercriminals.

Related article: FIRST Reveals Staggering Rise in Computer Hacking in China

» SPAMfighter News - 9/22/2010