Drop reported in infected computers worldwide

Nearly one third of computers still found to be infected.

The proportion of infected computers worldwide decreased from 38.49% in 2011 to 31.98% last year, according to an annual security report from PandaLabs.

In the report, China tops the list of countries with the most infections in 2012 (54.89% of machines infected), followed by South Korea (54.15%), and Taiwan (42.14%).

Meanwhile, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway earn the altogether more appealing accolade of being the three least infected countries (with 20.25%, 20.35% and 21.03% of machines infected, respectively).

In terms of the types of malware causing infections, trojans top the bill with 76.56%. The number of trojan-infected computers has risen markedly over the last couple of years, the report suggesting that one of reason for this growth is the increased use of exploit kits such as Black Hole, which are capable of exploiting multiple system vulnerabilities to infect computers without user interaction.

The full report can be found here (PDF).

Tags: infections, pandalabs, report, statistics. Posted on 06 February 2013 by Helen Martin. Leave a comment.

 del.icio.us  digg this! digg this

Quick Links

Poll
Do current laws offer enough protection for ethical ('white-hat') hackers?
Yes, the current laws are fine
No, they prevent responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities
The current laws are too lax, we need to be stricter on hacking
I don't know
Leave a comment
View 4 comments

Cybersecurity for Chemical Industry

Virus Bulletin
In this month's magazine:
  • VBSpam comparative review March 2013
  • VB100 comparative review on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
  • Java security in the era of BYOD
  • Ogee whiz
  • A deeper look into the ZeroAccess clickbot
  • Pushdo's new second generation
  • Shellcoding ARM: part 3
  • Phishing and fraud: the make-believe industry
Virus Bulletin 05 2013
Subscribe now!

Virus Bulletin currently has 227,267 registered users.