Over 25 Million New Strains of Malware Identified in 2009

A new report out by security experts says that over 25 million new strains of malware were discovered in 2009, and that number is expected to rise in 2010. Trojans are the most popular type distributed, making up 66% of all malware, followed by Adware at 17%. Adware includes scareware such as fake anti-virus, fake registry cleaners, and fake anti-spyware programs. Viruses, spyware, rootkits and worms make up the remainder.

The report also identified Taiwan (62.20%), Russia (56.77%) and Poland (55.40%) as the countries with the highest levels of malware infected computers and Sweden (31.63%), Portugal (37.79%) and the Netherlands (38.02%) as the countries with the lowest infection levels. The United States is in the middle with about a 50% infection level. Many of these infections may not even be known to the user. Millions of computers have been turned into “zombies” and added to botnets.

Experts say malware attacks will be on the rise and become more and more sophisticated as scammers develop new techniques to avoid detection. Social networking sites will bear much of the brunt as spammers and scammers seek to take advantage of the huge audiences these sites attract. Facebook has 400 million members and Twitter over 15 million in the US alone.

As 2010 continues to unfold stay with All Spammed Up for the latest spam and security news. It’s going to be an interesting year.