Report: McAfee Says Malware At All Time High
Malware is getting scary.
According to McAfee, malware production reached a new high in the first half of 2010, cataloging ten million new pieces of malicious code--six million found in Q2 alone.
The security firm indicated that infected portable storage devices caused the most damage, followed by fake anti-virus software and social media specific malware. On a global level, AutoRun malware and password-stealing Trojans are McAfee's Top Two malware threats.
"Our latest threat report (pdf) depicts that malware has been on a steady incline in the first half of 2010," said Mike Gallagher, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Global Threat Intelligence for McAfee. "It's also obvious that cybercriminals are becoming more in tune with what the general public is passionate about from a technology perspective and using it to lure unsuspecting victims."
McAfee said that cybercriminals took advantage of the hype surrounding the FIFA World Cup in South America. They also used various methods to promote scams and search-engine "poisoning." Surprisingly, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico did not land on the firm's Top 20 toxic search terms.
In North America, delivery status notifications, or non-delivery receipt spam, were the most popular malicious methods. Schemes that direct users to infected "cloned" websites were more prominent in Russia, Vietnam and three other countries.
"Additionally, McAfee Labs saw a resurrection of two "dead" botnets. Storm Worm and Kraken, once considered to be among the biggest botnets on the planet, are again on the rise," the company said.
To read McAfee's full Q2 2010 Threats Report, take a look at the pdf file here.
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oh so Mcaffe is selling well that must be your problem.
FIFA World Cup in South America?!?!? Cmon now im pretty sure the spammers arnt that bad.
More malware than ever. In other news, there's also more computer use than ever. But the two can't possibly be related, malware use is dramatically increasing and buying McAfee is your only chance of survival!
Too bad most popular anti-virus just anrn't doing their jobs properly these days.
How many computers i repair (has viruses on them)
that uses Norton, mcafee, panda, kapersky and other popular and they don'"t even know that virus are there.
And so many problems when you try to remove them also: BSOD, can't be uninstall because of unknown error. Uninstall cannot be found, you are not administrator (when i am)
Also the fact that those anti-virus slow down the computer so much.
Stick with free antivirus (Avast or antivir + spywareblaster/spybot/malaware bytes and super antispyware
Norton's most recent software is entirely problem free and is shown to be more efficient at detecting malware than free competitors. Most reviews say the same of Kaspersky. McAfee gets decent approval ratings too.
Free AV isn't as good as paid, but it's close. Indeed, using a free scanning tool like Malwarebytes Anti Malware is a great help, no matter what AV you're using.
I haven't used anti-virus for years and my machine had never been infected. Use your brain, don't click on what you shouldn't.
... kaspersky or bitdefender... or CURE IT if you need a extra check...
@subgum.....
How'd you know that you have no virus?
You don't have anti-virus so you cann't scan and see.....
I'm actually seeing two trends developing in my field.....Malware is at an all time high, and end-user common sense is at an all-time low. We routinely have our end-users installing things and giving out their exchange email passwords to phishing mails, even though we send out company-wide emails reminding users of COMMON SENSE practices.
Thanks for the heads up McAfee! I'll make sure my free MSSE is up to date right now!
And it will continue, until individuals convicted of writing, using, and/or deliberately spreading malware have their heads put into a bucket to catch the mess and someone pulls the trigger.
I laugh at people that say it's the Antivirus firms themselves creating the viruses and malware. They couldn't possibly create that much dirt by themselves while still having time to code their antivirus, testing, researching, developing and pay all the staff needed!
I do wish I was paid to hunt down those malware / virus writers, including scam artists. Is there a job for "Legal Hitman for the good of humanity"?
its almost laughable the amount of buissness that have inadiquate protection, any it admim worth there salt knows anti-virus programs only treat infections they dont prevent them
most people are sucerd in with macaffe and other peoples hype about needing an anti-virus
you only need an antivirus to remove programs what you really need is to fix the problem and the simplist way to do this is with a firewall for example look at this persons security website which actually shows you the benerfits of one
http://www.remove-malware.com
Ah McAfee, the only AV software harder to remove then most malware.
I'll stick by Kaspersky, by far the best of the popular subscription AV's, even if it is a 'little' resource heavy. Not sure if they've improved that in the 2011 version, not tried it yet.
McAffee's software is often worse for somputers than the malware. The *only* time the network at my office got a virus, McAfee couldn't see anything wrong at all. I had to prove to the I.T. department that the virus existed and then they had to use malwarebytes to clean the network.
Last "virus" type issue we had at our office malwarebytes refused to update itself, and when it scanned it said nothing was wrong. Yet our web browsers had been hijacked so every link redirected to a spoof site.
The expensive corporate antivirus didn't block it out either.
I'll stick with my free Avast that I use at home. Never had a problem.
I do wish I was paid to hunt down those malware / virus writers, including scam artists. Is there a job for "Legal Hitman for the good of humanity"?
I know people in the field who do that. They're pretty damn smart. Pulling apart code, sifting through assembly, tracking through logs... neat stuff. I wish I had more time to study my programming. These are the guys who take down botnets, seize control of the C&C servers, tell the botnet "YOU ARE NOW UNDER OUR CONTROL" and try to hamstring it.
The strange thing, up until around a few years ago, most botnets didn't use hardly any encryption, what they did use was as weak as ROT13.
I haven't used anti-virus for years and my machine had never been infected. Use your brain, don't click on what you shouldn't.
As for protection, AV is not a cure-all, nor is "not going to those parts of the net". Infected PDFs, Flash, Advertisements, etc... there are more and more ways they keep figuring out how to infect your computer. They show up in more and more places, facebook, news sites, many many websites.
I don't use anti-virus software myself. Just have some common sense and you should be fine. And to those saying if i don't have protection how do I know I'm not infected... I scanned my system after a year of not using antivirus and what did i find? Nothing. Not a single virus.
McAfee's really only good if you want to slow down and/or get critical windows processes blocked so you cant boot up.
I wonder how much of the "malware" McAfee actually creates and distributes themselves....
NOD32 + MalwareBytes active (pay version) FTW
Security software with biggest market share = most exploited and bypassed. aka McAfee, Norton = Useless (not to mention slowing your machine down more than the actual infections do)
I also find Telus's and Shaw's free antivirus to run very slow, Bitdefender to be terribly buggy, and AVG free to blow up a lot and need re-installing.
Screw McAfee. I'll never use them again after they sent out that bad update a few months ago that killed XP. We've been using MS ForeFront since then and loving it.
The only anti-virus software worse than McAfee is Norton!!
The only AV from McAfee I use is their Stinger, for when I need something else to scan a computer with in case the installed AV missed something. ClamWin helps too. Diversity is key.
Don't do anything stupid and you won't get a virus.
Of course it is. McAfee is like a malware in itself.
eh, they aren't worse than norton.
Sigh... The World Cup was in South Africa, which is a country in Africa, not South America, which is in turn a continent, not a country. The host is a country - not a continent!
[citation][nom]vic20[/nomSecurity software with biggest market share = most exploited and bypassed. aka McAfee, Norton = Useless (not to mention slowing your machine down more than the actual infections do)I also find Telus's and Shaw's free antivirus to run very slow.[/citation]
Ha, Shaw, haven't heard that name in years. Anyways it does seem logical that the most used antivirus programs would be the ones the malware creators would work hardest to get around. I never had an antivirus for about a year when I first got a computer. I got around to installing it, but they annoy me when they always recognize my game cracks and stuff like that as malware, so I've since uninstalled my protection. I probably should get something just in case, but I'm lazy, and have more pressing things to fix, such as my windows authentication workaround and my Megavideo time limit workaround, and my choppy connection.
well anti-virus programs are easy to disable ( i read this in an article written about one of the legal hacker conventions)
aparently it only takes a small amount of code to do it
but most people who complain about there anti virus program getting infected is usually becasue they have been on dodgy sites or downloaded dodgy stuff becasue most of the viruses you get of websites are not very well made and easy to get rid of
but for ones that arnt there is allways UBVCD4WIN which makes it impossible for viruses to stop you getting rid of them unless you managed to infect your bios somehow
i got macafee free with bt, it is the worst antivirus i have ever used and i have tried many free trials and all in and out of virtual machines and it really slows your computer down
it even slows down my computer to a crawl and i have a 3Ghz dual core E7600 and 3GB of ram
I haven't used anti-virus for years and my machine had never been infected. Use your brain, don't click on what you shouldn't.
Not all viruses are blatantly obvious and obnoxious. You could very well have a virus and not even know it, seeing as you don't have anything to detect it.
I never had an antivirus for about a year when I first got a computer. I got around to installing it, but they annoy me when they always recognize my game cracks and stuff like that as malware, so I've since uninstalled my protection. I probably should get something just in case, but I'm lazy, and have more pressing things to fix, such as my windows authentication workaround and my Megavideo time limit workaround, and my choppy connection.
Considering a lot of virus writers take advantage of cracks by slipping viruses and malware into them? yeah, I think you should! A number of them written up about actually do contain malicious code. Maybe not erase your harddrive stuff, but keyloggers and other tracker code.
Remember the fake files on filesharing networks that are loaded with spyware and malware? Either created that way, or downloaded and re-uploaded with the malware slipped inside.