McAfee, the world’s second-biggest producer of software to protect against viruses, said more than 10m new pieces of malware virsus code were catalogued in the first six months of the year.
McAfee has claimed that the felons of the cyber world made the most of the expectancy around and the excitement surrounding the recent FIFA World Cup in South Africa. These cyber felons employed numerous tactics to sponsor swindles and also the envenoming of the search engine.
The data comes from McAfee’s second-quarter threats report, which showed the first six months of 2010 to be the most active period for total malware production. The amount of spam reported was also up 2.5%.
“Cybercriminals took advantage of anticipation on and hype of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, and used various methods to promote scams and search-engine “poisoning”,” McAfee said.
In the first half of the year, 10 million new pieces of malware were cataloged. Portable storage devices received the most malware threats, followed by fake anti-virus software and malware specifically designed to infiltrate social media.
McAfee has disclosed that the dissemination of spam messages had been tremendously high in 2009. However, the spreading of spam messages has plateaued in the second quarter.
McAfee warned that for the first time the viruses were showing signs that they could penetrate Apple Mac computers, which are considered immune to viruses.
You might like: