The first quarter of 2011 was the most active for malware in the history of McAfee Labs’ quarterly threat reports, with six million unique malware samples recorded.
The month of February saw the most new malware samples of the quarter, at approximately 2.75 million. Fake anti-virus software had a very active quarter as well, reaching its highest levels in more than a year, totaling 350,000 unique fake-alert samples in March, according to McAfee Threats Report: First Quarter 2011.McAfee Labs saw a significant spike in malicious web content corresponding to news events such as the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, as well as major sporting events, with an average of 8,600 new bad websites per day.
At the same time, spam dropped to its lowest levels since 2007, as a result of the takedown of the Rustock and Zeus botnets, the report said. The level of spam dropped to less than half of what it was a year ago - to 1.5 trillion messages per day, outnumbering legitimate email traffic by a three to one ratio.
“There has been a lot of cooperation between governments and other authorities to shut those things down. There is a lot more momentum in that direction, which has reduced the amount of overall spam”, said Adam Wosotowsky, principal engineer at McAfee Labs. Read More
