McAfee report warns of growing threats to mobile platforms

PanARMENIAN.Net - Anti-virus software vendor, McAfee says that there is a steady growth of threats to mobile platforms.

The number of pieces of new mobile malware in 2010 increased by 46 percent compared with 2009. Their latest industry report also uncovered 20 million new pieces of malware in 2010, equating to nearly 55,000 new malware threats every day. Of the almost 55 million total pieces of malware McAfee Labs has identified, 36 percent was created in 2010. Concurrently, spam accounted for 80 percent of total email traffic in Q4 2010, the lowest point since the first quarter of 2007.

McAfee Labs sees the direct correlation between device popularity and cybercriminal activity, a trend expected to surge in 2011.

In 2009, McAfee Labs predicted that vulnerabilities in Adobe product would become the clear choice of malware authors and cybercriminals for distribution malware and compromising systems and networks. This prediction has come true.

The main hacktivist actor in Q4 2010 was the "Anonymous" activist group. Its members engaged in various cyberdemonstrations against copyright protection groups early in the quarter and against WikiLeaks censors and detractors later in the quarter. The boundary between hacktivism and cyberwarfare continues to blur, cellular-news reported.