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It seems like malware numbers are going up, rather than down as I would expect. But then if you think about it as a numbers game, the more people that come online – the more in absolute terms that are going to have nefarious intent. This means more hackers, more script kiddies and more malware.
It’s getting to be exponential though – but I guess we are safe as it’s not getting much more advanced than it was 10 years ago.
Finnish security vendor F-Secure has collected twice as many malicious software samples this year than it has over the last 20 years, a trend that highlights the growing danger of malicious software on the Internet.
Through the end of 2006 and 20 years prior, F-Secure counted a total of 250,000 samples, said Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure’s chief research officer. This year alone, 250,000 samples have been counted, he said.
I think a lot of them are just variations on existing viruses or worms, trying to modify them to bypass anti-virus solutions and make them a bit more intelligent.
Still not seeing much polymorphic stuff though.
Statistics on malware from antivirus companies can vary since the data is often derived from what their customers experience while using their software, and it depends on how widely that software is used.
But other security vendors have also noted the flood of new malware on the Internet over the last few years. Symantec said earlier this year that it detected 212,101 new malicious code threats between January and June, an increased of 185 percent over the same period a year prior.
The astounding increase shows that hackers “are generating large number of different [malware] variants on purpose to make the lives of antivirus vendors more difficult,” Hypponen said.
Get that Avast! installed on all your relatives computers and keep them safe, along with Firefox of course.
Source: Network World