Security Researchers Determine 2013 Will Be The Most Menacing Year for Malware

Read all about it, malware rates are exploding at exponential rates as we reach the half-way point for the year 2013. Many of the predictions for malware rates in 2013 have so far prevailed, which has been reiterated by several security companies in recent malware sample testing.

AV-Test, a German security company, has explained their frightening results from a study of compiling malware samples since 1984. Within their database, quite the awe-inspiring conglomerate of malware software samples has jumped to a total of 104,437,337 unique samples in 2008 compared to a trivial 1,000,000 in 2003 and almost 10 million by 2008.

The graph below (Figure 1.) charts new unique malware samples recorded by AV-TEST's database or malware repository. You must take note to last year's numbers and how this year we have already surpassed the rate of last year during the months of May going into June 2013.

Figure 1. - New unique samples added to AV-TEST's malware database (repository) over the past 8 years – Source: pcmag.com's security watch.

AV-TEST has recently explained how their database collection of malware samples is basically working overtime to collect over 20 million samples of new malware in the time frame between January and the beginning of May 2013. The put these numbers into perspective, AV-TEST didn't even have a combined total of 20 million samples in their database until August of 2012. That means in just a few months of this year malware samples collected have surpassed the collective amount since 1984, when AV-TEST first started collecting such data.

On average, based off of the preconceived numbers of just 2013 alone, malware rates at about 5 million new samples each month. That is about double the amount collected in 2012.

The adoption of different strategies is a paramount to combat the overwhelming influx of malware. If AV-TEST's study and quickly-building database of incoming malware samples is any indication as to what the near future of malware will look like, we are all in for a serious malware epidemic.

What some of you are probably begging to ask is where all of this malware is coming from? Well, to be blunt, it is coming from every virtual avenue imaginable. Malware today has a completely different face from just over a year ago, and that face is one many computer users have never seen or dreamed of before. Basically, new malware is only as effective and creative as its creator. With that said, malware creators are in the business of sidestepping security software first, and second by making their attack as effective as possible. With those two forces working in sync, new sophisticated malware is almost unstoppable.

In most cases of new malware and where it comes from, we have found many samples to adapt to their environment. This means malware creators are using encryption methods and arming malware with the ability to scramble or change. Moreover, recent malware is social in that it may have the ability to connected to command and control servers to await new instructions or receive some type of update with new code.

The possibilities of emerging malware are virtual endless, and the latest numbers from AV-TEST are like a nightmare for all of us when you add up the numbers and imagine a not-so-distant time when we face as many as 60 million new pieces of malware by the end of this year (2013). If that is not enough to make you want to take the necessary precautions to protect your own computer, then you are seriously living on the edge.