Stats On Malware

Written by weebit

Saturday, 17 April 2010 11:13

According to Symantec, malware's million mark was reached in the latter portion of 2007(1).

In 2006 Microsoft released a report stating that for fifteen months their malware removal tool scanned and found 16 million instances of malicious software on 5.7 million unique Windows-based computers.(2)

For the month of March 2010 1,456,524 give or take a few computers were infected.(3) Keep in mind this is just one report from a on-access scanner. Which literally means the anti-virus software was downloaded and installed and run a scan for the first time which found the malware.

For some time now I have checked the stats on what the malware is up too. How much malware is there? How many computers were infected? How many websites? ...So how many websites were infected? Sophos detected an average of roughly 5,000 infected Web pages a day for 2007.(4) Then in 2008 they detected an average of around 15,000 infected Web pages a day. 79 percent of those 15,000 are legitimate websites.

In 2008 Symantec observed an average of 75,158 active bot-infected computers per day.(5)

Today Trend Micro reports 26,669 computers were scanned this past 24 hours, and found to be infected after a scan done by HouseCall, on-line virus scanner for PC. In the past thirty days Trend Micro's on-line scanner HouseCall scanned and found 16,488,049 infected computers.(6) That number is rising every second you read this article.

Kaspersky noted In 2009, the system for analyzing vulnerabilities identified 404 different vulnerabilities, and a total of 461,828,538 vulnerable files and applications were detected on users’ computers. They analyzed the 20 most common vulnerabilities, which made up 90% (415,608,137) of all vulnerable files and applications identified on computers running their anti-virus software.(7)

The number of computers infected with Conficker.A or Conficker.B dropping from a high of around 6.7 million in late October 2009 to around 6.3 million machines in January 2010. The number of Conficker.C infections has declined from 400,000 computers in late October 2009 to roughly 280,000 in January 2010.(8)(9)

The number of malware (malicious software) samples that Symantec saw in 2009 was 71% higher than in 2008. In total, Symantec identified almost 2.9 million items of malicious code during that 12 month period. (10)

Amazing? I just wanted you to see some numbers here so you could grasp somewhat of a count. Keep in mind that I just gave you stats from just a few websites over a few years. It is no where near the total for all infected computers. It does not give a accurate count on total on-line, and on-access scans for ALL computers active on the Internet today, and a few years past. Plus at any time the number of malware can change. You are just seeing a small percentage of the amount of infected computers online.

You need to see these numbers because, just having someone tell you to keep your computer secure is not enough. Today's computer users are vast. You are always a target. Regardless if you are reading e-mail, or visiting a webpage you are at risk. This also is regardless if the e-mail or website you are visiting or reading has a good reputation or not. It does not matter. YOU are a target. YOU need to have a secure computer.

Security list links:
http://newbies-pc.com/8896/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=91:security-links-a-must-have&catid=47:security

Some of these links are pdf files

(1)http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9075518/Malware_count_blows_past_1M_mark
(2)http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/06/microsoft_releases_malware_sta.html
(3)http://www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204792106/Monthly_Malware_Statistics_March_2010
(4)http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59415
(5)http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/white_papers/b-whitepaper_internet_security_threat_report_xiv_04-2009.en-us.pdf
(6)http://wtc.trendmicro.com/wtc/default.asp
(7)http://www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204792101/Kaspersky_Security_Bulletin_2009_Statistics_2009
(8)http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9145018/Conficker_worm_hasn_t_gone_away_Akamai_says?
(9)http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/wiki/pmwiki.php/ANY/InfectionTracking
(10)http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8630160.stm