McAfee’s Threats Report for second quarter (Q2) of 2012 revealed that it has detected a 1.5 million rise in malware since Q1 2012, which the company said highest rise in malware samples identified in the last four years.
During the period, McAfee Labs has also detected new threats which include mobile ‘drive-by downloads’, the use of Twitter for control of mobile botnets, and the look of mobile ‘ransomware’.
McAfee Labs senior vice president Vincent Weafer said over the last quarter the company has seen prime examples of malware that impacted consumers, businesses, and critical infrastructure facilities.
"Attacks that we’ve traditionally seen on PCs are now making their way to other devices," Weafer said.
McAfee reports its malware sample discovery rate has accelerated to about 100,000 per day.
According to the firm, all new mobile malware identified during the quarter were focussed at the Android platform, which was comprised of SMS-sending malware, mobile botnets, spyware and destructive Trojans.
During the quarter, about 1.2 million new thumb drive samples were detected and about 1.6 million samples of new password-stealing malware, which gathers account names and passwords.
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McAfee Labs has registered about 2.7 million new bad URLs per month, while in June alone the new URLs were associated to about 300,000 bad domains.
Nearly 94.2% of the latest bad-reputation URLs host malware, exploits or code which have been mainly developed to hijack computers, the company noted.
