Trojans Continue to Account for Over Half of New Malware

According to a new report from Panda Security, computer trojans represent 55% of new malicious samples detected during the third quarter and are also responsible for 54% of all infections.

These findings are understandable in the context of a threat landscape that is focused on illegal income, since trojans offer more possibilities in this respect than other types of malware.

However, the numbers are a bit higher than what they were in the second quarter, when trojans accounted for 52% of new samples and 53% of infections.

Unlike trojans, for which the samples/infections ratio is balanced, viruses came in second place for new malicious files (23%), but only fourth for infections (10.64%).

This is not abnormal, considering that a single virus can infect hundreds of files on the same computer.

The second-most common type of infections were caused by Adware (13%), while worms (11%) came in third.

The situation was reversed for samples, where worms had the upper hand with 12%, while adware accounted for 7,51%.

Breaking down infections by region, Taiwan was the most affected country with 50% of scanned computers being infected, while Russia came in second with around 45%.

A notable change compared to the second quarter was recorded for Brazil, which jumped three places from 6th to 3rd, and where over 40% of computers have at least one infection.

In addition, Chile, a newcomer to the top 15, has landed directly in seventh place, with under 40% of computers infected, a bit more than the United States.

Since Argentina fills the fourth position, we can conclude that there was a spike in malware activity in South America during the past quarter.

As far as spam is concerned, junk emails accounted for 95% of all email traffic in Q3. Moreover, the top ten countries are responsible for 55% of that activity.

The first three places are assumed by India, Brazil and Russia. There are almost no changes compared to Q2, except for UK leaving the list.