The growth of malware

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Malware doubles in 2010
- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011...al-networking/
January 19, 2011 - "Sophos has today published its annual Security Threat Report*, looking back at the last twelve months and ahead to the threats we can expect to encounter during 2011... One of the key findings is that reports of social networking spam and malware attacks have risen once again. By mid-2010, Facebook recorded half a billion active users, making it not only the largest social networking site, but also one of the most popular destinations on the web. Unsurprisingly, this massive and committed user base is heavily targeted by scammers and cybercriminals, with the number and diversity of attacks growing steadily throughout 2010 – malware, phishing and spam on the various social networks have all continued to rise in the past year...
• 40% of social networking users quizzed have been sent malware such as worms via social networking sites, a 90% increase since April 2009.
• Two thirds (67%) say they have been spammed via social networking sites, more than double the proportion less than two years ago.
• 43% have been on the receiving end of phishing attacks, more than double the figure since April 2009.
This isn't just a problem for home users. Many people check their social networking accounts from the workplace, making the sites a potential vector for attacks against businesses. There's no doubt that cybercriminals are showing a much higher level of interest in the social networks than ever before, with Facebook being the site they are targeting the most..."
* http://www.sophos.com/threatreport2011 - PDF file: 150 pgs.

- http://www.informationweek.com/share...leID=229000910
January 19, 2011 - "New malware appears, on average, once every 0.9 seconds. For 2010, 95,000 unique pieces of malware in total appeared, doubling the volume of malware seen in 2009. Those findings come from the Sophos Security Threat Report 2011 ..."

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

AV-Test year-end malware stats
- http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2011...m-av-test.html
January 27, 2011 - "Andreas Marx at AV-Test has shared some more information which highlights the significance of the malware problem. The numbers are staggering — AV-Test processed an average of 54k samples per day in 2010, up from an average of 33k in 2009 — and up from 426 samples per day just a decade ago. Stats below, source data here* (xls), all courtesy of AV-Test."
(Charted - see the Sunbeltblog URL above.)
* http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/alex/...s_2011-02.xlsx

AV certs - 2010 Q4 (Vista) ...
- http://www.av-test.org/certifications.php
2011-01-27 (?)

> http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/alex/gblog/avtest4.png

20 million -new- pests in 2010 alone:
- http://www.h-online.com/security/new...ew=zoom;zoom=1

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Search engine malware doubled in 2010...
- http://www.darkreading.com/taxonomy/...e/id/229300350
Mar 04, 2011 - "Malware authors are increasingly using search engines and social networks to spread their wares and are relying less on email, according to a report published yesterday. In its new "2010 Annual Security Report," Barracuda Networks* says spam dropped by half during 2010, while search engine malware doubled. The Twitter Crime Rate - the percentage of accounts created per month that are eventually suspended by Twitter - increased 20 percent in 2010, Barracuda says, "signifying a concentrated focus on the more lucrative social networks and search engines as attack vectors". To help users fight infection on social networks, Barracuda Networks yesterday rolled out a free service, Profile Protector**, which helps detect malicious threats on Facebook and Twitter... attackers have increased the spread of search engine malware and expanded their reach beyond Google. In June 2010, Google was crowned king of malware, turning up more than twice the amount of malware as Bing, Twitter, and Yahoo! combined, the report says. But by December 2010, with Google producing 38 percent of overall malware, Yahoo! was at 30 percent, Bing at 24 percent, and Twitter at 8 percent. The amount of malware found daily across the search engines increased 55 percent between June and December, Barracuda says. One in five search topics leads to malware, while one in 1,000 search results leads to malware. Barracuda Labs also analyzed more than 26 million Twitter accounts in order to measure and analyze account behavior. The number of true Twitter users - those with more than 10 followers and friends - increased to 43 percent in the second half, up from only 29 percent in June 2010. For every 100 Twitter users, 39 have between one and nine followers, while 50 have more than 10 followers. Approximately 79 percent of Twitter users tweet less than once per day, the report says. After decreasing at the end of 2009, the Twitter Crime Rate increased 20 percent from the first half of 2010 to the second half of 2010, going from 1.6 percent to 2 percent, Barracuda Networks says."
* http://www.barracudalabs.com/research_resources.html

** http://profileprotector.com/

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

New Malware increases by 26% - More than 73,000 samples every day
- http://press.pandasecurity.com/usa/n...-to-pandalabs/
Mar. 16, 2011 - "... In the first three months of 2011, PandaLabs identified an average of 73,000 new malware strains each day, most of which were Trojans. Moreover, there was a 26 percent increase of new threats compared to the same period last year...
- http://prensa.pandasecurity.com/wp-c.../03/Graph1.jpg
... Trojans remain the most popular type of threat to computer systems, and now account for 70 percent of all new malware....
- http://press.pandasecurity.com/wp-co...3/GRAPH2EN.jpg
... Banker Trojans have decreased, bots have remained steady, and fake anti-virus or rogueware has decreased in popularity. However, the number of “downloaders” has increased significantly. Downloaders are a subtype of Trojan that, once it has infected a user’s computer, connect through the Internet to download additional malware. Hackers often use this method because the downloader is lightweight – only containing a few lines of code – and can go completely unnoticed unlike other Trojans..."
- http://press.pandasecurity.com/usa/w...3/GRAPH3EN.jpg

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Trojan production UP ...
- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/06/malware_trends/
6 April 2011 - "Malware authors have stepped up production rates still further in their efforts to overwhelm anti-virus defences with banking Trojans and other crud. During the first three months of 2011 an average of 73,000 new strains of malware have been created every day: 10,000 more than during the same period last year... Panda's pie-chart here*... PandaLabs latest quarterly report can be found here**..."
* http://press.pandasecurity.com/wp-co...MILIES_ENG.jpg

** http://press.pandasecurity.com/press-room/reports/
Quarterly Report PandaLabs (January-March 2011) - PDF file 2.6MB
Pg. 9 - "... PandaLabs has found an important increase in the number of new threats received at the laboratory every day: from 55,000 just a few months ago, to 63,000 at the end of last year and an average of 73,190 so far in 2011. That is, a 16 percent growth compared to Q4 last year..."

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Q1 2012: Malware report - Increase across -all- Platforms
- http://www.mcafee.com/us/about/news/...120523-01.aspx
May 23, 2012 - "... PC malware reached its highest levels in four years, as well as a steep increase in malware targeting the Android platform. Mac malware was also on the rise, indicating that total malware could reach the 100 million mark within the year...
- Mobile malware raced up a significant incline during Q1 2012, with 8,000 total mobile malware samples collected. This large increase was due in part to McAfee Labs’ advancements in the detection and accumulation of mobile malware samples. Financial profit is one of the main motivators for spreading malware on the Android platform, as identified by McAfee Labs malware researcher Carlos Castillo in a recent blog post. Nearly 7,000 Android threats have been collected and identified through the end of Q1, a more than 1200 percent increase compared with the 600 Android samples collected by the end of Q4 2011. The majority of these threats stem from third-party app markets, and are typically not found in the official Android market...
- Malware Increase in PCs and Macs
By the end of 2011, McAfee Labs collected more than 75 million malware samples. Q1 2012 had the largest number of PC malware detected per quarter in the last four years. This increase brought the grand total to 83 million pieces of malware samples by the end of Q1, up from 75 million samples at the end of Q4 2011. Major contributors to the total were strong increases in rootkits, a stealth form of malware, as were password stealers, which reached approximately 1 million new samples in Q1. In Q1, email continued to be a medium used for highly targeted attacks, and nearly all targeted attacks began with a spear phish..."

> http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/r...at-q1-2012.pdf
___

- http://www.av-test.org/en/statistics/malware/
Last Update: 05-24-2012
___

Monthly Malware Statistics: April 2012
- https://www.securelist.com/en/analys...ics_April_2012
11 May 2012 - "The following statistics were compiled in April using data collected from computers running Kaspersky Lab products:
• 280 million malicious programs were detected and neutralized;
• 134 million (48% of all threats) web-borne infections were prevented;
• More than 24 million malicious URLs were detected..."
___

Most dangerous websites ...
- http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_1...rous-websites/
May 24, 2012 - "... According to Symantec*, 20 percent of all blog and Web communication sites are infected with malicious code, 15 percent of hosting sites are infected, and 10 percent of business and economy sites..."
* http://www.symantec.com/threatreport/

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

MS SIRv14 - Updated data shows prevalence of Java malware ...
- https://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/arc...edirected=true
12 May 2013 - "Recently we released the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report volume 14. The report initially presented data showing reduced Java malware detections in Q3 2012 and gaining prevalence in Q4 of 2012. During a later review of the backend data, we found that we were missing some detection counts from our initial calculations. We have revised the data...
> https://www.microsoft.com/security/p...s/sir-14_1.png
Machine count of detections for each exploit categories
... we can see clearly the sudden rise in Java exploitation... As the HTML/JS category is usually used in delivering other exploit vectors (for example, Blacole pages leading to other Java and PDF, SWF exploits), Java malware is the most prevalent exploit vector that actually tries to exploit vulnerabilities in the software since 2011.
> https://www.microsoft.com/security/p...s/sir-14_2.png
... breakdown of individual Java exploits
In 2012 we saw four different Java vulnerabilities were used most, CVE-2012-1723, CVE-2012-0507, CVE-2012-4681, CVE-2012-5076.
> https://www.microsoft.com/security/p...s/sir-14_3.png
... when the vulnerable software is exposed to the malicious Java exploits, the success rate of the exploitation is usually very high compared to memory corruption vulnerabilities... many times the Java vulnerabilities are adopted by malware writers after the updates from Oracle are released..."