The truth is though, I’m now more convinced than ever, that I’m much more like the Dutch boy, in another old familiar children’s story, who stuck his finger in the dike.
An exaggeration? Hardly – according to PandaLabs Annual Malware Report released today, the company identified 25 million new malware strains in 2009, with Banker Trojans and fake antivirus programs topping the list – more malware than it detected in the previous 19 years combined. With apologies to Winston Churchill – “Some finger – some dike!”
The following report provided by PandaLabs, the anti-malware laboratory of Panda Security, reviews the major incidents, and events, concerning IT security in 2009, and includes what we should expect to face in 2010.
PandaLabs 2009 Annual Report:
The outstanding trend of the last 12 months has been the prolific production of new malware: 25 million new strains were created in just one year, compared to a combined total of 15 million throughout the rest of Panda Security’s 20-year history.
This latest surge of activity included countless new examples of banker Trojans, which represented approximately 66 percent of all new samples, as well as a host of fake antivirus programs, also known as rogueware. The report also draws attention to the resurgence of traditional viruses previously on the verge of extinction, such as Conficker, Sality and the veteran Virutas.
During 2009, spam was also highly active: approximately 92 percent of all e-mail traffic was identified as spam. The tricks used to dupe potential victims into opening these e-mails have focused heavily on exploiting current affairs and dramatic news stories – a tactic which also applied to search engine optimization (SEO) attacks. As such, PandaLabs saw waves of junk mail related to celebrity scandals or deaths (real or fictitious), swine flu, compromising videos of politicians, etc.
This year PandaLabs also tracked how spam impacted different industrial sectors, revealing that the automotive and consumer electronics industries were the worst affected, followed by government agencies.
In terms of malware distribution channels, social networks, mainly including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Digg, as well as SEO attacks that directed users to malware-laden Web sites, were favored by cybercriminals last year. Cybercriminals continued to consolidate underground business models that exploited social engineering techniques to generate revenues.
The Annual Malware Report also examines how individual countries and regions have been affected throughout the year, based on the data gathered from computers scanned and disinfected free of charge with Panda ActiveScan.
Taiwan tops the rankings, followed by Russia, Poland, Turkey, Colombia, Argentina and Spain. Countries suffering fewest infections include Portugal and Sweden. A graphic representation of malware infection rates by country can be found here.
Last year also saw a rise in the number of cyber attacks with political motives or targets, suggesting that what people have been watching in espionage and sci-fi movies for years is now becoming a reality.
In conclusion, PandaLabs predicts that the amount of malware in circulation will continue to grow during 2010. Windows 7 will attract the interest of hackers when it comes to designing new malware, and attacks on Apple computers will increase. While the industry will also witness more politically motivated attacks, PandaLabs believes that 2010 will not be the year of the cell phone virus.
To read the full PandaLabs Annual Report report in PDF format, click here.
More information about malicious codes is available in the Panda Security Encyclopedia. You can also follow Panda Security’s online activity on its Twitter and PandaLabs blog.
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