Malware at all time High
Malware is everywhere and isn’t about to disappear. The latest PandaLabs report says that last year alone, of all the malware that ever existed, cyber crooks created and distributed 20 percent of that. Malware comes in the form of Trojans, worms, viruses, adware/spyware and miscellaneous, with Trojans leading the pack.
Ransomware seems to be gunning for the top spot, though, with a recent resurgence.
What about 2014? The 2013 Annual Security Report anticipates that the Internet of Things and Android devices will head the headlines (Android continues to be a favorite target of cyber criminals).
PandaLabs foresees that Android will get socked by hundreds of thousands of new malware strains. In 2013, criminals unleashed over two million new malware threats for Android.
Another area of attack is social media, and in 2013, even large companies, movie stars and politicians were affected.
The Trojan is a true warrior, in that it’s responsible for three-quarters of attacks, says PandaLabs. There was a huge leap in the number of circulating viruses as well, and is attributed to basically two virus families: Xpiro and Sality, says Luis Corrons, the technical director for PandaLabs.
Sality has been around for quite some time, but Xpiro is the new virus on the block, and can infiltrate “executable files on 32-bit and 64-bit systems,” says Corrons.
We’re in the midst of the malware plague; never mind the Bubonic plague. The whole planet is under attack, but some countries more so than others. China is the most infected, along with Turkey and Ecuador: 54.03, 42.15 and 40.35 percent of compromised personal computers, respectively.
Of the 10 least harmed countries, nine are in Europe; the other is Japan. For Sweden, Norway and Finland, the percentage of infected personal computers is 20.28 percent, 21.13 percent and 21.22 percent, respectively.
Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to AllClearID. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him knock’em dead in this identity theft prevention video. Disclosures.
