Malware is at an all-time high, says security vendor McAfee in its recently released its McAfee Threat Report for the third quarter of 2010, even as spam has fallen to a two-year low. The dip in spam continues a general decline that started in January this year, though McAfee did note that spam volumes are "still quite high." 

However, the outlook on the malware front is more dire, with instances of malware soaring as it registers an average of 60,000 new malware identified per day--almost quadruple the figures seen in 2007.

The report noted that cyber criminals are growing increasingly more sophisticated, and are giving considerable attention to popular trends and insecure software to better target their malware. Mike Gallagher, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Global Threat Intelligence for McAfee sums up the situation this way, as reported by PC World: "They [hackers] are attacking mobile devices and social networking sites, so education about user activity online, as well as incorporating the proper security technologies are of utmost importance." The full McAfee report can be downloaded here (.pdf).

For more on this story:
- check out this article at PC World
- check out this article at CNET News

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