Thailand Has More Infected Pcs Than Any Other Country

[george]

Panda Labs says Thailand has more infected PCs (70,000) than any other country

Study: A third of all malware in history created in 2010

More than a third of all malware that has ever existed was created by criminal gangs in 2010 alone according to the latest PandaLabs Annual Report.

To be precise, the company found that 34 percent of all existing malware has been concocted by cyber-criminals in the last year, banishing forever the image of the disgruntled geek creating viruses in his bedsit.

It's not all bad news however, there's been a dramatic slow-down in the rate with which threats are growing: since 2003 the number of new threats has been doubling every but in 2010 they only increased by 50 percent.

An unwelcome trend however, has been the rise in social media malware, in particular Facebook and Twitter, although PandaLabs pointed out that there have also been attacks on other sites like LinkedIn or Fotolog. According to PandaLabs, hackers use several techniques to trick users.

These include the hijacking of Facebook's 'Like' button, identify theft to make it appear that messages are being sent by trusted sources, and the distribution of fake apps.

PandaLabs also pointed out that the year has also seen a rise in activist attacks on websites, so-called hacktivist incidents. Most notably, of course, was the co-ordinated response by the 'Anonymous' group in support of Julian Assange of Wikileaks. The DDoS attacks that brought down Mastercard, Visa and PayPal were a reminder of how quickly such attacks could be mobilised.

Full story: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/010611-study-a-third-of-all.html

[nikster]

Anti Virus software companies warning of viruses....

Who woulda thought???

[Crushdepth]

Thailand has more infected PCs than China? I don't think so. 95%+ of attacks on my servers are Chinese IP space. It's been that way for about 5 years.

[asiawatcher]

Even a Mac does not preclude you. A Mac can receive a virus and even though it does not affect the system if the content is forwarded, the virus goes with it. But it also remains within the Mac for any future forwarding or PC connectivity. People should be aware of this. I have changed to Mac's and saved a zillion crashes that were regularly taking me down on PC (I spend 14 hours a day on computers), and the Mac's solved the problem but running Microcrap programs always leaves you wide open to glitches and attacks and even on Mac, Word, PowerPoint, Excel et al all still crash regularly. Whether it is viral or just crappy programming I don't know - and don't care - but a question was raised recently of a man who was an anti virus programmer who said often, during the process of stopping viruses, others evolve and get passed on against competitors thus creating an ongoing demand as the originator already has the solution and it becomes like passing on a puzzle to be solved by the competitor. Not a nice thought!

[pampal]

70000 Infected computers is a small number

[Pib]

Maybe the Thai government or IT industry can put a positive spin on this report. Something along the lines of "Thailand StrivesTo Be Malware Hub."