Cybercriminals are releasing hundreds of thousands of new malware malware A new report has stated.
Researchers from Atlas VPN using statistics published by AV-TEST GmbH concluded that in the first three quarters of 2022, a total of 62.29 million new malware sample detections or approximately 228,164 new variations every day.
Of those, 59.58 million new malware samples were designed to target the Windows operating system, accounting for 95.6%. Linux malware takes second place (1.76 million samples/2.8%), while the top three places go to Android.
Most popular operating system
According to Atlas VPN, the mobile operating system detected 938,379 new threats between Q1 and Q2 2022, or 1.5% – and for macOS, researchers found 8,329 unprecedented variants. seen before.
The researchers claim that the main reason cybercriminals focus on Windows is its popularity. Microsoft’s operating system is by far the most dominant desktop product, accounting for about 30% of the global market share. According to Statcount’s global statistics, Android holds 43.47% market share, iOS 17.25% and Linux 1.08%.
Despite the dire statistics, the outlook isn’t as grim as it seems. Compared to the same period last year, the number of new malware strains has actually decreased significantly – by more than a third (34%), the researchers say.
Out of all the different variations, Ransomware remains the most destructive, and therefore the most common. Other popular variations include infostealers (capable of stealing passwordcredit card information, keystrokes and screenshots), cryptocurrency miners (also known as cryptojackers) and bots (which use compromised endpoints to launch denial-of-service attacks) distributed service, which can be sold as a service).
