Panda Lab Reveals: Around 27 Million New Strains of Malware Formed in 2012

As per the latest Panda Labs Annual Report, 27 Million innovative strains of malware were formed in 2012, averaging around 74,000 per day. This leads to the total number of malware samples to a whopping 125 Million.

China is the most affected country, where almost 54.89 computers have malware. The UK stands fourth least-infected country that have almost 22% of infected computers, while the US has 30.52% infection rate. Severe as it seems, it also display a general improvement, with China infections dropping from 56% in 2011, and Taiwan ranging from 52% to 42% over the same period.

The infections were actually by Trojan instead of virus or worm, with Trojans giving more than 76% (up from 66% in 2011) of all infections. Viruses stood second with 8% followed by worms which are 6.44%.

PandaLabs suggests increased use of exploit kits, such as BlackHole to be a major cause for Trojan infection enabling exploits of multiple system vulnerabilities causing infection of computers to be automatically infected without user intervention.

In the life of Internet users, social networking sites play a vital role and are thus covered extensively in the report. Facebook and Twitter seems to be the most popular social media sites used by cyber-crooks in tricking users, infecting their computers and stealing their personal details. LinkedIn, which is a tool that has increasingly become a key part of job searches, has also suffered a major breach leading to a theft of 6.5 Million user passwords.

However, ransomware has also grabbed the attention of many headlines in 2012. Hundreds of thousands of computers across the world that had been applying fear and blackmailing techniques were infected through these in order to extort money from computer users.

Apart from providing a review of 2012, the report also offers some useful prediction for this year on various topics including growth of malware, Windows 8, malware for mobile devices, vulnerabilities, social networks, and Mac malware.

However, both cyber espionage and cyber war will be on the rise with more and more countries are going to organize their own cyber commando units. With this there is an increasing concern for the information to be compromised. There is also an added possibility of using the malwares in launching direct attacks on critical source.

Related article: Panda’s Online Scanner Contains Bugs and Hole

» SPAMfighter News - 2/12/2013