Surge of adware
The new PandaLabs quarterly report has revealed that adware increased more than any other type of malware during the third quarter of the year, accounting for 31.05% of all new malware that appeared in that quarter, an almost 10% from the previous three months. According to the report, the reason for this surge is the increase in fake antivirus products used to trick users, infect computers and, ultimately, defraud the victims.
“Fake antivirus products, when run, appear to carry out a scan of the computer and inevitably detect a series of infections which are actually completely false,” says Jeremy Matthews, head of Panda Security’s sub-Saharan operations. “The applications claim that in order to ‘disinfect’ the computer, users must buy the pay-version of the antivirus. If users fall for this ruse, they will be paying to remove malware which never really existed. The objective of cyber-crooks is, as in most cases, to profit financially.”
Despite this growth in adware, there were more Trojans than any other category of malware, accounting for almost 60% of all malware samples that appeared between July and September. Worms (4.53%) and spyware (2.93%) were the other most prevalent categories.
Adware, however, was responsible for more infections than any other type of malware, accounting for 37.49% of all infections recorded by PandaLabs. Trojans (28.7%) and worms (11.56%) were in second and third place respectively.
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