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More than 5 million new malware samples in the last quarter of the year, report PandaLabs
November 2011 by PandaLabs
PandaLabs, Panda Security’s antimalware laboratory, published its Quarterly Report for Q3, analyzing the IT security events and incidents from July through September 2011. Despite being the holiday period for many countries in the world, this has not been translated into a decline in the creation of malware. In this quarter 5 million new malware samples have been created and the record of new Trojans has been broken as it the preferred category by cybercriminals to carry out their theft of information.
The Anonymous Group, who starred in the second quarter, has continued making the headlines in this period, due to the arrest of some members, theft of data from different web sites and operation PayPal.
The PandaLabs report also includes information about cybercrime, cyberwar, social networks, Mac and cell phones, social networks and a wide section to explain about exploits.
According to Luis Corrons, Technical Director at PandaLabs, “the highlight of this third quarter is the record set in the creation of new Trojan samples. 3 out of 4 new malware samples created by cybercriminals are Trojans and this is just another proof that they are focused on stealing users information”.
Quarterly figures
During the months of July, August and September the record of new Trojan samples has been broken. Three out of four new samples are Trojan Horses, from 68% in the previous quarter to 76.76% in this period. Since the popularization of cybercrime, Trojans have always been at the top, but never reached this percentage. Second place is for viruses with a 12.08% (down from the previous month more than 4 points). Third place is form worms that descend from 11.69% to 6.26% in the last quarter. We should highlight the growth of new adware samples that go from 1.37% in the second quarter to 3.52% in the period, mainly due to the growth of fake antivirus, included in this category.
As recorded by Panda Security’s online scanner, Panda ActiveScan, data are similar to those recorded in the 2nd quarter. Trojans, viruses and worms again ocuppy the top three with 63.22%, 10.11% and 9.74% of infections respectively.
The Top 10 most prevalent malware specimens account for 49.97% of all infections. However, this can be a bit misleading as many of the entries on the list are generic detections (detected by Collective Intelligence) which include several malware families.
Once again, China leads the infection ranking
In the ranking of the Top 20 countries with the most infections, China is, once again, leading this ranking according to the Collective Intelligence data. Taiwan (50,93%) and Turkey (46,68%) occupy the second and third place respectively, followed by Russia and Poland. PandaLabs observed Sweden is again the country with the lowest detection rate with 23,36%, followed by UK, Switzerland and Germany. It is interesting to note that all of them are European with the exception of Japan and Australia.
“We must take note of the countries that report after report are at the forefront of the least infected countries, such as Sweden, and see the good practices carried out to apply the same principles. We must learn from the successes and mistakes in order to achieve a safer world”, said Luis Corrons.
