IT industry news: Third of all viruses made in first ten months of 2010

10:35 26th November 2010

A third of all computer viruses ever created were made in the first ten months of 2010, research has shown.

Analysis by Panda Security found that between January and October this year hackers designed 20 million new types of virus, the same amount as in the whole of 2009.

The company's Collective Intelligence database, a system for automatically detecting, analysing and classifying files, now contains 134 million samples, 60 million of which are malware (viruses, worms, trojans and other threats).

People looking to further their understanding of malware through IT training should note that the average number of new threats created every day has risen from 55,000 to 63,000.

Despite these dramatic numbers, the speed with which the number of new threats is growing has dropped since 2009.

Commenting on this, Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs, said: "This doesn't mean that there are fewer threats or that the cybercrime market is shrinking…it seems as though hackers are applying economies of scale, reusing old malicious code or prioritising the distribution of existing threats over the creation of new ones."

Recent research by GetSafeOnline.org showed that organised gangs are duping web users into buying anti-virus software that is infected with malware.
Posted by Hannah James

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