Number of viruses to reach one million by end of the year

The overall number of viruses is set to reach one million by year’s end, according to security experts.

Malware writers have been made to create original types of viruses and exploits more frequently as businesses and individuals develop security practices, the experts said.

Sophos chief technology officer Paul Ducklin said about 25 percent of unique malware has been formed in the last six months of its 20-year history.

“About 85 to 90 percent of malware families have a fix created for them almost immediately.Malware writers aren’t getting the same bang for buck as they used to because businesses and consumers have become much more diligent with security over the last five years. The number of infectious email attachments getting through are down from about one in 40 about five years ago to one in 1000.”

He said the drop in infections are as a result of better gateway filters, more appropriate corporate policies and user education, and dilution from a rise in legitimate email traffic.

Although the security industry is on top of usual spam and phishing attacks, further effort needs to be put into preventing and eliminating so-called drive-by-downloads, according to Ducklin.

The attacks permit hackers to redirect mass amounts of traffic by inserting malicious iframes into legitimate websites. The hacks are typically imperceptible to website visitors and do not regularly draw consideration from security personnel because they only require a single line of code to be manipulated.

He said it is essential that the exploit is patched because hackers search for compromised sites for follow-up attacks.

F-Secure Asia Pacific vice president Jari Heinonen said it logs about 25,000 malware samples each day, the highest on record.

“The total number of viruses and Trojans will pass the one million mark by the end of 2008 if this trend continues. While there are more viruses than ever before, people report seeing less of them [because] malware authors are changing their tactics. Drive-by downloads are the preferred way of spreading malware [because] they happen automatically by visiting a website, unless users have a fully patched operating system, browser and plug-ins.”

Heinonen said malware will increasing target the kernel sector through rootkits such as Mebroot, which attacks the bootstrap sector.