34% of All Malware Threats Ever Created Emerged in 2010

Recently, anti-malware laboratory, Panda Security released a new report. According to the report, the numbers of threats created and circulated during the first ten months of 2010 were actually one third of the total already existing viruses.

Nearly 20 Million new types of malware were created till October 2010, which included new threats and alternatives of already existing malware families. Further, the average number of malware threats created on a regular basis rose from 55,000 in 2009 to 63,000 in 2010, an increase of around 14.5%.

Commenting on the issue, Luis Corrons, Technical Director of Panda Labs stated that, new malware threats had been augmenting at a stupendous rate of 100% or even more for the past 7 years. However, he further stated that, in 2010, completely new malware had augmented by 50%, considerably less than the past standards, as reported by Web News Voice on November 24, 2010.

He further highlighted that, these figures do not indicate that there are fewer malware threats or that the cybercrime market is dwindling. In contrast, it is still expanding and by 2010 end more new threats would be identified in Collective Intelligence compared to 2009. He added that, it appears that cybercrooks are employing economies of scale, reutilizing conventional codes or prioritizing the circulation of already existing malware threats over the new ones.

Moreover, it has been found that the average life duration of 54% of malware has been decreased to only 1 day in comparison to life duration of numerous months that were more common in past years.

This reduced life duration of malware and augmented number of types is an evidence of an important change in the online crime scenario; as a matter of fact many types of malware are created just to infect and compromise a few computers before they vanish.

Since antivirus solutions are proficient of quickly identifying new malware, cybercriminals alter them or make new ones to avoid filtering techniques. The rapidly altering malware types make it extremely significant to opt for safety techniques like, Collective Intelligence, which can quickly counteract new malware threats and decrease the threat of window to which netizens are vulnerable during the 1 day life span.

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

» SPAMfighter News - 12/7/2010