Record Breaking Malware Growth

According to the latest report by F-Secure, malware has had explosive growth during the last half of 2008 with trends continuing into 2009.

The report sites that 2007 doubled over the previous 2006 records, and 2008 more than tripled the 2007 numbers in total malware instances found. The database with signature based definitions is now over 1.5 million with 1 million of those added in 2008.

They track both total samples, and unique samples. The above chart shows steady and strong growth in both areas. So not only are we seeing more malware, but more unique and new malware.

The report also talks about the growth in the number of zombies that are part of a botnet. The lowest of estimates begins at 12 million of more than 1.2 billion computers currently on the Internet but most professionals agree the number is likely many multiples of that.