With More Technology Comes More Malware
It would be hard to argue that computers, software, and technology haven’t become an integral part of society. Unfortunately, just as technology has had an increased involvement in our lives, so have the attempts on infecting and harming our use of that technology. To rephrase this in a way that may be easier to understand, but possibly harder to swallow, in the last two years, more malware has been reported and detected than the combined yield of the past ten years.
AV-Test, a leading institute that focuses on anti-virus research, reported that they register almost 400 thousand new malicious programs every day. Yet, it didn’t always used to be that way. From 2012 to 2014, the amount of malware in the world exploded three times over, jumping from 100 million to 300 million in that three-year span.
This quick rise in malicious units leaves the number of reported total malware programs just short of an expected 350 million for 2015. However, what may be most alarming about this upward trend in malicious instances is the 72 percent spike in malware that was experienced during 2014. During this spike, more than 143 million new viruses were born into the cyber world.
With computers getting infections more often, it can be easy to assume the world has become a more dangerous place to be a software consumer. However, it should be noted that more people are connected to technology now than ever before. Naturally, one can assume that with more technology comes more opportunities to exploit said technology.
It may also be worth taking a look in the mirror before pointing fingers at the rest of the tech world. In the last six months, roughly one out of every eleven spam messages originated from the United States. This is the most in the world during this time frame. Furthermore, Kaspersky Lab reported that 39 percent of web attacks in the second quarter of 2014 were carried out from resources located in one of just two different countries: the United States and Germany.
With the advent of new technology, and further adoption of smartphones, personal computers, and other devices, the world has become a more connected place. However, one drawback to this has become fairly clear: With more technology comes more malware.
