Symantec has just notified us that their July 2011 intelligence report is now available for download. Aside from telling us the obvious (that the internet is a bad, bad place), the report highlights a couple of worrying trends in the security world. One of these is the rise of aggressiveand rapidly changing form of generic polymorphic malware. What does big words mean is that malware writers now code their software in a way that it changes enough every time someone opens it to spoof antivirus software, allowing it free reign in your PC and network. They’ve also a couple of other trends related to security:
- Spam – 77.8 percent in July (an increase of 4.9 percentage points since June 2011)
- Phishing – One in 319.3 emails identified as phishing (an increase of 0.01 percentage points since June 2011)
- Malware – One in 280.9 emails in July contained malware (an increase of 0.02 percentage points since June 2011)
- Malicious Web sites – 6,797 Web sites blocked per day (an increase of 25.5 percent since June 2011)
- 35.9 percent of all malicious domains blocked were new in July
You can read the entire report, including some of the nitty gritty details of it here.