McAfee Threat Report Reveals Malware at All Time High

With 6 million malicious files found this quarter, malware, which can harm computers and steal passwords, has reached an all time high, according to McAfee (News - Alert) Threats Report released today. At this rate, McAfee, Inc’s threat report for the second quarter indicates that malware producers have been very active in the first six months of this year. At the same time, according to McAfee study, spam leveled out with only 2.5 percent growth since the first quarter 2010.

Malware continued to soar in the second quarter, as there were 10 million new pieces cataloged in the first half of this year, said McAfee. Consistent with last quarter, threats on portable storage devices took the lead for the most popular malware, followed by fake anti-virus software and social media specific malware, added McAfee. With approximately 55,000 new pieces of malware that appear everyday, globally AutoRun malware and password-stealing Trojans round out the top two malware threats, as per the McAfee study.

On the other hand, the report shows that spam rates have hit a plateau, after reaching its highest point in the third quarter of 2009, with nearly 175 billion messages per day. This year cyber criminals took advantage of anticipation on and hype of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, and used various methods to promote scams and search-engine poisoning, according to McAfee Threats Report.

Interestingly, the McAfee report shows that the most popular types of spam varied from country to country with some noticeable findings. For instance, delivery status notifications, or non-delivery receipt spam, were the most popular in United States, Italy, Spain, China, Great Britain, Brazil, Germany and Australia. While malware spam, or anything that comes with a virus or Trojan attachment urging you to visit an infected website, was the most popular in Colombia, India, South Korea, Russia and Vietnam, says the report. Argentina had the most variety in spam, with 16 different topic areas, ranging from drugs to lonely women to diplomas, as described in McAfee’s report. Finally, as described in this study, Italy came in with the least variety, just six types of spam.

In a statement, Mike Gallagher, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Global Threat Intelligence for McAfee, said. “Our latest threat report depicts that malware has been on a steady incline in the first half of 2010.” He added, “It is also obvious that cyber criminals are becoming more in tune with what the general public is passionate about from a technology perspective and using it to lure unsuspecting victims. These findings indicate that not only should cyber crime education be more widespread, but that security organizations should move from a reactive to a predictive security strategy.”

Although the security software maker warned that attackers leverage major events to poison Internet searches, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, however, was surprisingly absent from the top 20 toxic search terms. Additionally, McAfee Labs saw a resurrection of two dead botnets. Storm Worm and Kraken, once considered to be among the biggest botnets on the planet, are again on the rise, warns McAfee.

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