The Malware Pandemic Takes Hold

Detailed analysis of the extent of the malware pandemic, with a link to a white paper outlining how to fight back.

"If malware were biological, the world would be in the grip of the worst pandemic in history. In 2009, more than 25 million different unique malware programs were identified, more than all the malware programs ever created in all previous years (see the annual report from Panda Labs). That's a pretty incredible statistic. Malicious programs now outnumber legitimate ones by many orders of magnitude.

The world's largest cloud computing user? Not Microsoft, not Google, not Amazon.com. The ringleaders of the Conficker botnet, with more than 4.6 million infected computers under their control, win by a mile. Some antimalware vendors report that 48 percent of the computers they scan are infected (see page 10 of the APWG Phishing Activity Trends Report) with some sort of malware. Trojan horse programs make up 66 percent of all threats (see page 4 of the annual report from Panda Labs)."