Malware on the rise, with Trojans by far the biggest threat

Malware virus detected

Not worried about malware? Provided you take sensible precautions when on the web, and have decent anti-malware installed, your chances of getting infected are relatively low, but the threat still persists and isn’t to be underestimated.

According to PandaLabs, a total of 20 million new strains were created worldwide in the third quarter of 2014, which works out to 227,747 new samples being identified every day.

At the same time, more people were infected. PandaLabs says the global infection ratio was 37.93 percent in Q3, up just over 1 percent from Q2 (36.87 percent).

PandaLabs found that Trojans remain the most common form of malware by a long way (78.08 percent), and were also the source of most infections too -- 75 percent, up from 62.80 percent in the previous quarter. Viruses are a distant second threat (8.89 percent), followed by worms in third place (3.92 percent).

PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs) were responsible for 14.55 percent of all infections, followed by adware/spyware (6.88 percent), worms (2.09 percent), and viruses (1.48 percent).

Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs, says "In these last months we have seen how cyber-crime has continued to grow. Criminals haven’t ceased to create malware in order to infect as many systems as possible so as to access sensitive or confidential information. Corporate environments are also under attack," he added. "In the last three months many large companies have been drawn into numerous scandals, including the so-called 'Celebgate', where nude photos of actresses and models hosted on Apple’s iCloud service were leaked, or the theft of passwords for Gmail and Dropbox".

Looking at infections globally, PandaLabs found China has the highest infection rates (49.83 percent), followed by Peru (42.38 percent) and Bolivia (42.12 percent). Norway (23.07 percent) and Sweden (23.44 percent) have the lowest infection rates, followed by Japan (24.02 percent).

Image Creditwavebreakmedia / Shutterstock

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