According to the latest McAfee threats report, Q2 2012 sees a 1.5 million increase in detected malware samples over Q1 2012-- the biggest seen by the company over the past 4 years.
Meanwhile the malware sample discovery rate is up to nearly 100000 daily thanks to trends such as mobile "drive-by downloads," the use of Twitter for mobile botnet control and the emergence of mobile "ransomware."
The BYOD trend opens further attack vectors, as devices brought in from outside enterprise tend to be either improperly secured or can access questionable online resources. Android devices are especially vulnerable, seeing how the Google OS is the chief target for malicious attacks.
Attacks hitting mobile devices include SMS-sending malware, mobile botnets, spyware, Trojans and the new weapon in the malware writers' arsenal-- mobile ransomware.
Ransomware not only damages user data, but also damages equipment and even (as the name implies) holds data hostage.
Botnet infections reach a 12-month high, as Twitter starts finding use as mobile botnet command-and-control support. New thumb drive malware samples reach 1.2m in Q2 2012, while new password-stealing malware samples reach nearly 1.6m.
EMEA achieves the dubious honour of territory hosting the most servers carrying malicious content, with the Netherlands as chief host nation. According to McAfee recorded global new bad URLs reach an average of 2.7m monthly, with 95% of URLs holding at least one form of malware.
