'Explosive growth' in malware predicted

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 19 January 2012 13:52

Business IT - Security

A security vendor is predicting a 23% growth in malware during 2012.

Security vendor Bitdefender predicts this year will see "explosive growth" in malware. Company officials say the number of samples will increase by almost 17 million to 90 million by the end of 2012.

Much of this growth will be in malware that takes advantage of social networks and Android - "Android malware will undergo exponential growth, but starting from a much lower base of malware samples," warned Bogdan Botezatu, e-threats analyst at Bitdefender.

Bitdefender's watch list for 2012 also includes HTML5-based attacks, IPv6 exploits and the use of IPSec to mask traffic to and from botnet command centres, and Windows 8 exploits.

The company's latest E-Threat Landscape Report is available here http://www.bitdefender.com/media/materials/e-threats/au/H2_2011_E-Threats_Landscape_Report.pdf [PDF].