When I start my day, it never enters my mind to consider whether or not I’ll be mugged that day; if my home will be burglarized; or if I’ll be the victim of any type of crime. Except in one circumstance.
Each time I start an Internet session, I consciously consider the odds that I will be a victim of cyber criminals. I know I’ll have to deal with attempts to scam me; attempts to compromise my machine through driveby downloads; infected downloads and applications; infected web sites and redirections – the list goes on… and on …and on.
Little wonder then, that I was not in the least surprised to see PandaLabs reveal in their malware report on the most notable malware trends for the first 3 months of 2011, that surfers are now exposed to 73,000 new malware threats every day – an increase of 10,000 over the same time frame last year.
Report highlights:
Incidence of new malware has increased 26 percent over the same period last year.
PandaLabs now observes on average of 73,000 malware samples every day, an increase of 10,000.
Trojans remain the most popular type of threat, accounting for 70 percent of all malware.
Downloaders, a subtype of Trojan, have seen an astounding increase over the last 3 months.
New malware growth from Q1 2010 through Q1 2011.
Malware by type.
In the following graphic you’ll note that Downloaders, a lightweight Trojan since it contains only a few lines of code (making it harder to detect), have increased dramatically. Downloaders are particularly dangerous, since they are designed to connect to the Net to facilitate the downloading of additional malware.
I’ll risk sounding like a broken record, and repeat what I’ve said numerous times here –
“Controlling malware intrusion, while surfing the Net, through the use of a “virtual” environment rather than operating in a “real” environment, makes sense given the escalating level of cyber criminal activity on the Internet.”
BufferZone, is a particular effective and easy to use freeware virtualization application (perfect for casual users), which creates an isolated environment called the Virtual Zone, while you surf the Internet. You can read more about BufferZone, here.
About PandaLabs:
Since 1990, PandaLabs, Panda Security’s malware research laboratory, has been working to detect and classify malware in order to protect consumers and companies against new Internet threats.
To do so, PandaLabs uses Collective Intelligence, a cloud-based proprietary system that leverages the knowledge gathered from Panda’s user community to automatically detect, analyze and classify the more than 73,000 new malware strains that appear every day.
This automated malware classification is complemented through the work of an international team with researchers specialized each in a specific type of malware (viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware and other attacks) to provide global coverage.
Get more information about PandaLabs and subscribe to its blog news feed here.
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Bill Mullins' Weblog - Tech Thoughts 