McAfee has released its Threat Report for the first quarter of 2009 (available here). The most significant points of this report are the following:
- 12 million new IP addresses were taken in control by malicious software, which is a 50% increase since 2008.
- The United States is now home to the largest percentage of botnet-infected computers, currently hosting 18 percent of all zombie machines.
- More than 800 new variants of the Koobface worm have been discovered in March alone.
- The infamous Conficker worm represents a small subset of all threat reports despite the fact that it makes a big contribution to the overall figure of pwned Windows PCs.
- AutoRun malware represented 10 percent of reported detections during the first quarter–quite a bit more than Conficker.
- Cybercriminals are increasing their use of URL redirects and Web 2.0 sites to disguise their locations.
- Junk mail volumes are down 20 per cent in Q1 2009, compared to the same quarter a year ago. Nevertheless, it is stated that cybercrooks are using more advanced tactics to distribute junk mail.
- Servers hosting legitimate content have increased in popularity with malware writers as a means for distributing malicious and illegal content.
