McAfee Reports Historic Levels of Malware

According to Web security firm McAfee's second-quarter data, Malware reached its highest levels ever in the first half of 2010. The company found 6 million malicious files in the second quarter, making for a total of 10 million malicious files over the first six months of the year.

The most frequently used malware included threats on portable storage devices, fake anti-virus software, software specifically targeted at social media users, AutoRun malware and password-stealing Trojans. McAfee reported that approximately 55,000 new pieces of malware appear every day around the world.
Spam rates appear to have leveled off after reaching nearly 175 billion messages per day in the third quarter of 2009, but there was a spike in spamming that surrounding the FIFA World Cup held in South Africa during July. During that time, cybercriminals used a variety of methods to promote scams and search-engine poisoning globally.

The most popular forms of spam in the U.S. were delivery status notifications or non-delivery receipt spam, which was also the case in Great Britain, China, Australia, Italy, Spain, Germany and Brazil. Argentina had the world's highest number of different spam topics with 16, according to McAfee's report.