Malware outgrows security solutions

Cyber criminals have released more than 286 million distinct malicious programs within a year, and traditional signature-based security solutions fail to keep up with the sheer volume of malware attacks, say Symantec security experts.

Duncan Mills, Symantec senior product marketing manager, indicated in a recent Webinar: “Around 75% of malware infects less than 50 machines. From a mass distribution model of one worm attacking millions of PCs, this has now switched to a micro distribution model where a worm is making fewer yet more direct attacks.”

Symantec says it released the Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 and Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition to combat the high volume of sophisticated online attacks targeting organisations of all sizes, including small and medium enterprises.

According to the company, Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 works by using Insight, Symantec's community- and cloud-based reputation technology, to detect and block new threats and reduce the overhead of virus scanning by 70% by white-listing Symantec-trusted high reputation files.

According to Symantec's latest Internet Security Threat Report, attackers released more than 286 million distinct malicious programs in 2010. This creates a challenge for traditional signature-based security solutions that can't keep up with the sheer volume of attacks.

The Symantec report also shows the leading cause (36%) of data breaches resulting in identity theft in 2010 involved the theft or loss of a computer or data storage device .This is nearly unchanged from its 37% total in 2009.

Sophos' Security Threat Mid-year Report 2011 recorded 150 000 new malware samples every day. This means a unique file is created almost every half second - a 60% increase from 2010. In addition, 80% of 19 000 new malicious URLs created each day were legitimate Web sites that have been hacked.

According to the Kaspersky IT Threat Evolution 2011 Second Quarter Report, the development of legislation and successes in combating cyber crime in the US and western Europe have resulted in malware being distributed from developed to developing countries.

Kaspersky says the second quarter of 2011 saw the start of a new phase in the evolution of rogue anti-virus programs in terms of circulation and quality. The number of attempted installations of fake AV blocked on computers grew by 300%.