Latin America. McAfee released the "Fourth Quarter 2011 Threat Report," in which it reveals that malware has exceeded the company's estimate of 75 million unique malware samples. Although the creation of new malware slowed down in the last quarter of 2011, malware destined for mobile devices continues to grow and has managed to break the record so far.
"The threat landscape continues to evolve in 2011, and we have seen significant shifts in the motivation for cyberattacks," said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs, adding that "we have seen that organizations, platforms or devices are not immune to targeted and sophisticated threats. On a global basis, we conduct many of our personal and business transactions through mobile devices, which is creating new security risks and challenges on how to protect our personal and business data."
Total growth in PC-based malware continued to decline during the fourth quarter of 2011 and has reached a significantly lower level than the same period last year. The cumulative number of malware samples has surpassed the 75 million barrier. 2011 and the fourth quarter of that year have been the periods with the most malware for mobile devices that McAfee has seen so far, with Android being the main target of malware creators.
On the other hand, in the third quarter of 2011, McAfee Labs recorded an average of 6,500 new malicious websites per day; the last quarter of that same year the figure reached 9,300 sites. On average, about one in 400 URLs was malicious, and some days the proportion reached one in 200. This adds up to a total of more than 700,000 active malicious URLs.
The vast majority of new malicious websites are located in the United States, followed by the Netherlands, Canada, South Korea, and Germany. North America hosted the largest number of servers hosting malicious content at over 73%, followed by Eastern Europe at over 17% and Asia Pacific at 7%.
As for spam figures in 2011, they reached their lowest level in years, especially in areas such as the United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina and South Korea. Despite this global decline, McAfee Labs continues to find targeted phishing and very sophisticated spam.
Overall, global botnet growth picked up in November and December from its fall in August, with Brazil, Colombia, India, Spain and the United States seeing significant increases. By contrast, in Germany, Indonesia and Russia they have declined. Of the botnets, Cutwail continues to be important, while Lethic has continued to decline in the last quarter of 2011. Grum has regained its levels after a long decline, surpassing Bobax and Lethic at the end of the fourth quarter of 2011.
