Malware spawning peaks at 60,000 a day
Daily malware growth hit a new level in the third quarter, with an average of 60,000 new pieces seen every day, McAfee has found.
The recently-acquired security giant also identified more than 14 million unique pieces of malware over the period - one million more than in the third quarter of 2009. “Our Q3 Threat report shows that cyber criminals are not only becoming more savvy, but attacks are becoming increasingly more severe,” said Mike Gallagher, senior vice president and chief technology officer of global threat intelligence at McAfee.
The Zeus piece of malware caused plenty of havoc over the period and a mobile version of the highly sophisticated malicious software was created during the quarter. McAfee also saw an increase in email campaigns attempting to deliver the Zeus botnet using well-known organisations names, such as Western Union, as part of hackers’ social engineering tricks.
