- Recently both McAfee and Symantec released reports on the state of malicious online activity in 2009. Here are some highlights from the stats and findings of Symantec's Mid-Year Update and the McAfee Threats Report .
- 1.MALWARE
The number of malware variants created by hackers to fool the security geeks continues to mushroom exponentially.
- 2.MALWARE
Symantec reports that it now blocks a monthly average of 245 million attempted malicious code attacks worldwide, most of them zero day attacks delivered via the Web.
- 3.MALWARE
McAfee reports that one of the most common forms of malware making waves today takes advantage of AutoRun features on USB thumb drives-in a 30-day period last quarter the company found more than 27 million infected files on customer computers.
- 4.SPAM
After authorities shut down the infamous McColo facility in 2008, spam volumes dropped by nearly three quarters in a 24-hour period. Since then they've crept right back up.
- 5.SPAM
Symantec reported that throughout June spam was averaging about 90 percent of all e-mail messages.
- 6.SPAM
McAfee saw similar numbers. It reports that the amount of spam sent grew by 80 percent from first quarter to second quarter of 2009.
- 7.BOTNETS
The surge in spam is directly correlated with increased zombie and botnet activity over the year so far.
- 8.BOTNETS
According to McAfee, the first six months of the year saw an explosion of 26 million new zombies waking to service-approximately 150,000 new zombies created from unprotected machines each day-an unabated trend that portends continued spam and malware problems throughout the rest of the year.
- 9.SOCIAL NETWORKS
Social networking sites are quickly becoming one of the most lucrative and effective tools that online scammers and thieves have available to them today.
- 10.SOCIAL NETWORKS
"For example, there was a recent and well-publicized set of attacks on a popular social networking site," Symantec researchers wrote, "in which phishers took one compromised user account and used it as a launch pad for targeting that user's friends."
- 11.SOCIAL NETWORKS
Similarly, hackers also created a 'game' on a blogging site that asked a lot of revealing personal information upon registration to fool hapless participants into divulging information like their mother's maiden name, Symantec says.
