Kaspersky Lab forecasts ten-fold increase in new malware for 2008

According to the company’s analysts, in 2007 the number of new malicious programs recorded on the Internet, including viruses, worms and Trojans, amounted to 2,227,415, which represents a four-fold increase on the results for 2006 (535,131). The overall volume of detected malware reached 354 GB in 2007. Before the year was out, many leading antivirus experts were calling this huge increase in malware an extreme situation. Some antivirus companies were simply incapable of effectively combating the sheer number of threats.

However, the year-end results for 2008, according to the experts at Kaspersky Lab, will demonstrate a very different trend. They forecast not a four-fold but 10-fold increase in the number of new malicious programs – an increase of more than 20 million.

In addition to the quantity, the quality of malicious programs is also improving. New and more complex samples, such as the notorious Zhelatin (aka the Storm Worm), are emerging that demonstrate a wide range of hostile behavior and distribution methods.

The number of new signatures added to the Kaspersky Lab antivirus databases in 2007 amounted to 250,000. According to our forecast, 1 million new signatures will be added to the databases in 2008. With the help of new technologies developed by the company’s antivirus specialists, it will be possible for a four-fold increase in the number of new signatures to combat the 10-fold increase in the number of new malicious programs. These technologies allow one signature to successfully neutralize dozens or even hundreds of different types of malicious programs.