Panda Security’s latest malware report says that Trojans make up 73% of all new malware created during the first few months of 2009, while the distribution of spyware has grown rapidly to 13.15%, up from a mere 2.5% in the previous quarter.
Says Jeremy Matthews, head of Panda Security’s sub-Saharan operations: “We have seen a dramatic increase in the amount of spyware in circulation aimed, in all likelihood, at saturating laboratories and consequently infecting more users.”
The Virtumonde spyware was the most prolific, and infected more computers than any other malicious code in the first quarter of 2009. This malware combines aspects of adware and spyware, monitoring users’ Internet movements, rigging search engine results and displaying advertising banners and pop-ups for some products. Despite the notable growth of spyware, though, it is still behind Trojans (31.51%) and adware (21.13%), in terms of the number of infections caused overall during this period.
The region with the highest percentage of active malware is Taiwan (31.7%), followed by Brazil and Turkey.
