According to the German security company AV-Test, malware has exploded to unprecedented levels in the past five years. More troublingly, they anticipate seeing over 60 million new pieces of malicious software by the end of the 2013. AV-Test went on to say that the system has already recorded “over 20 million samples of new malware between January and the beginning of May.” To put those numbers in context, AV-Test didn’t reach 20 million new samples until August of last year.<\/p>\n
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AV-Test says they expect to see five million new malware samples each month \u2013 about double the rate from last year.<\/p>\n
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“This dramatic development is also forcing the manufacturers of anti-virus software to adopt different strategies, for example whitelisting, an approach that has now been popular for a number of years.” “Instead of sending 100,000 users the identical malware sample, a malware writer generates 10,000 unique samples for 10 users each or even 100,000 completely unique samples.” “In the majority of cases, the malware writers are using the same executable and then, it will automatically be encrypted, packed and scrambled in different ways,” said Marx.<\/p>\n
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In the back and forth between the bad guys and security companies, attackers must constantly change their strategies if they hope to reach any ripe targets.<\/p>\n
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Perhaps 60 million new pieces of malware might just be the sign of a job well done, but nonetheless, it\u2019s a scary number.<\/p>\n
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