Cyber Crime and Malware Continue to Evolve

There was an astounding number of new malware threats introduced in 2005, more than 16,000. That means that on an average day almost 44 new threats were unleashed. But, what is more concerning is that malware has continued to evolve as a tool of cyber criminals more than script kiddies. What used to be the domain of bored teenagers with too much time and enough knowledge to be dangerous, is now being leveraged by organized crime. New Trojan horse programs outnumbered new worms 2:1 in 2005. Rather than flooding the world with a virus or worm, these new threats are targeted at smaller regions or directly at companies which keeps them beneath the radar and helps them avoid undue attention from the antivirus vendors. For more about security threats in 2005 and the trends they represent, see this article in The Register: Security threats soar in 2005.