McAfee has unveiled McAfee Threats Report: First Quarter 2010, which has uncovered that a USB worm has taken the No. 1 spot for top malware worldwide.
Threats on portable storage devices took the lead for the most popular malware. AutoRun related infections held the No. 1 and No. 3 spots due to the widespread adoption of removable devices, mainly USB drives. A variety of password-stealing Trojans rounded out the top five. Those include generic downloaders, unwanted programs and gaming software that collects statistics anonymously. Unlike past studies, the popularity of these threats ranked consistently worldwide.
"Our latest threat report verifies that trends in malware and spam continue to grow at our predicted rates," said Mike Gallagher, Senior Vice-President & Chief Technology Officer, Global Threat Intelligence, McAfee. "Previously emerging trends, such as AutoRun malware, are now at the forefront. We were also surprised to find some of geographic difference in spam-related topics, such as the volume of diploma spam coming out of China."
McAfee also found that Thailand, Romania, the Philippines, India, Indonesia, Colombia, Chile and Brazil have a higher portion of malware infections and spam. These countries have experienced significant Internet growth over the past five years and are lagging in security awareness.
