Twenty per cent of malware that has ever existed was created and distributed by cybercriminals during 2013, according to cloud security firm PandaLabs’ 2013 annual report.
Last year saw the creation of 30 million new pieces of malicious software, with over 82,000 being created on a single day.
The majority of the malware created were variants of already existing malicious software, allowing cybercriminals to target computers unnoticed.
The company said while Trojans remained the most common malware, accounting for over 70 per cent of new variants, ransomware saw a marked increase.
According to the company over 78 per cent of all malware infections resulted from Trojans.
“It seems that cybercriminals managed to infect more computers with Trojans in 2013 than in previous years. In 2011, Trojans accounted for 66 per cent of all computer infections, whereas this percentage rose to 76 per cent in 2012. This growing trend was confirmed in 2013,” said Luis Corrons, technical director at PandaLabs.
China topped the most malware-infected countries, with more than half of all computers in the country being infected.
HumanIPO reported last month enterprises worldwide would spend over US$490 billion because of malware associated with pirated software.
“The chance of encountering malware in a pirated copy of software is one in three. The chance of encountering malware in a PC purchased with pirated software is more than 60 per cent,” the International Data Corporation (IDC) said.
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