Researchers Find 230,000 New Malware Threats Each Day with Tens of Millions Each Year

Malware creation is in no way shape of form going to slow down. To bring home that testament, the researchers at PandaLabs have seen nearly 21 million new stands of malware emerging between the months of April and June of this year. What that comes down to is 230,000 new malware threats created each day or about 2.66 new threats each second.

As alarming as these newfound statistics are surrounding the growing creation of malware, most of the new malware types created accounted for are Trojans, which represent about 71% of the 21 million new strands discovered in just under a 3 month period.

Malware rates have always been a strong focus of ours as we come up with new innovative ways to combat many of the new threats. Reports from our internal techs as well as those from security research firms like PandaLabs all culminate an effort to fight against a perpetually growing giant that wants to create utter destruction.

In examining the infection rates and reasons as to why there are almost 3 new malware threats created every second of each day, we look to different regions of the world where there might be a disproportion placement of computer hackers and cybercrooks. PandaLabs have found that the majority of malware infections arise out of Asian and Latin America. Within those regions, taking China as a primary example, the infection rates are over 47% followed by Turkey having a 43% rate, Peru with 41%, Russia 41% and Argentina, making up the majority of the Latin America initiated threats, has an infection rate of 40%.

The countries with the lowest malware infection rates, though still very relevant in making up a large landscape of the millions of emerging threats we see today, accounts for just 25% starting with the UK and dwindling down with Switzerland with 24%, Japan at 23% and Norway at 22% with other notable regions following closely in Europe.

Organized attacks have been at the forefront of major malware attacks. Such cases were a result of highly organized cybercriminal groups who dish out ransomware campaigns followed by a serious influx of mobile device attacks. One of the more prominent attacks rooted from the CryptoLocker Ransomware threat, which initiated a new trend of malware that utilized encryption techniques to hold an infected system for ransom until the cybercrooks get paid off.

In some of the latest observations by us and other security researchers, we have noticed that the spread of ransomware threats take to Word documents and malicious apps. Even so, mobile devices are big targets where malicious apps are used to spread ransomware and other types of malware threats.

The malware battle has no end in sight even if you were round up the majority of the perpetrators and lock them up in a prison. Nearly every day there are new hackers joining the forces of cybercriminal groups that steadily keep up with their quota of producing almost three new malware threats each second. We must all stay vigilant and do what we can to protect our own interest, even if that means avoiding the use of a certain website, email attachment or enticing download.