Malware Reaches Epidemic Levels

We know that malware is a problem, those viruses and software that attacks your PC – although it seems that those Macs are coming under the eye of virus writers these days. What’s staggering is the scope of the problem.

 

The BBC has reported that security company AV Test said it saw 5.49 million unique samples of malware, up five times from the 2006 figure, while Panda Security claimed to be getting 3,000 samples of malware daily.

 

Those are staggering figures, but even a conservative estimate from F-Secure said that figures in 2007 were double those of 2006.

 

Many of these new malware samples aren’t actually that new. All they do is take pieces from older viruses and re-assemble them in new ways.

 

"It started about nine months ago, in early 2007, we saw massive surges of new variants," explained Gerhard Eschelbeck, chief technology officer at anti-spyware firm Webroot. "There are days when we see 1,000 or more new samples. It's a low-effort high-frequency type threat. There's no completely ground-breaking new stuff out there."

 

And there’s the problem. Anti-virus programs spot program signatures, but can’t do that until people submit samples, and with the amount of malware out there, simply keeping up is a losing battle. They’re have to adapt and adopt new techniques such as heuristic or behaviour blockers to combat the problem.