PandaLabs, Panda Security's anti-malware lab, has recorded five million strains of new malware over the past three months.
PandaLabs' quarterly report monitored cyber threat activity during the period from July to September this year. The security vendor notes in its report that the majority of new malware detected is Trojans (71.32%), although adware (13.13%) and spyware (9.16%) have also increased.
“We are currently receiving some 50 000 new examples of malware everyday,” explains Jeremy Matthews, head of Panda's sub-Saharan operations.
“This is a massive increase from the 37 000 samples we were detecting daily just a few months ago. There is no reason to believe that the situation will improve in the coming months.”
The third quarter saw a 15% rise in computers infected by malware compared to the previous quarter. PandaLabs says in more than 37% of cases, the culprits were Trojans, while adware was responsible for 18.68% of all infections. The vendor explains this was due to the major proliferation of fake anti-virus programs.
However, the report shows that worms have slightly decreased, accounting for 4.23% of total new malware, as opposed to 4.4% in the previous quarter. On the other hand, spyware has increased for the first time this year, rising from 6.9% to 9.16%. Viruses have significantly increased from 18.16% in the second quarter to 32.01% in the third quarter.
Panda says it has detected major growth in the distribution of malware through spam, social networks and rogue search engine optimisation techniques, which draw users to spoof Web pages from which malware is downloaded.
These methods for propagating malware often use social engineering, exploiting a range of current issues such as swine flu, Independence Day, forest fires or speeches by Barack Obama.
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