A new malware is born every 4″ – New research results show that the rate of new malware variants created by malicious attackers continues to break records.
According to the G DATA SecurityLabs Malware Report, new types of malware were discovered less than every four seconds and 4.1 million new strains were found in the second half of 2014, an increase of nearly 125 percent over the first half.
During the entire year, nearly 6 million new malware were discovered. This is a 77% increase over the rate in 2013.
Data shows that in the second half of 2014, Trojans remained high in the categories tracked by G DATA researchers, but are at a pace that could be replaced by adware.
Adware showed the highest growth rate among all malware categories, with a growth rate of 31.4%. While the number of new downloaders was on the rise during the second half, the growth rate of adware outpaced this increase to climb two places in the malware category chart.
Meanwhile, spyware increased its prevalence while backdoors decreased, placing them in fourth and fifth place, respectively.
Interestingly, rootkits ranked ninth on the list, the second half of the year was a huge blow to their prevalence. The report showed that there were 18 times more new variants than in the first half of 2014.
"In the past, more and more new Trojans appeared very quickly in this area over the years, with new groups constantly using new attack methods. However, in recent months there have been few changes in the report," the study states, explaining that despite this, the volume of attacks is still increasing.
