Proliferation
Preliminary results from Symantec published in 2008 suggested that "the release rate of malicious code and other unwanted programs may be exceeding that of legitimate software applications." According to F-Secure, "As much malware produced in 2007 as in the previous 20 years altogether." Malware's most common pathway from criminals to users is through the Internet: primarily by e-mail and the World Wide Web.
The prevalence of malware as a vehicle for Internet crime, along with the challenge of anti-malware software to keep up with the continuous stream of new malware, has seen the adoption of a new mindset for individuals and businesses using the Internet. With the amount of malware currently being distributed, some percentage of computers will always be infected. For businesses, especially those that sell mainly over the Internet, this means they need to find a way to operate despite security concerns. The result is a greater emphasis on back-office protection designed to protect against advanced malware operating on customers' computers.
On March 29, 2010, Symantec Corporation named Shaoxing, China, as the world's malware capital. A 2011 study from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies published an article in Software Development Technologies, examining how entrepreneurial crackers are helping enable the spread of malware by offering access to computers for a price. Microsoft reported in May 2011 that one in every 14 downloads from the Internet may now contain malware code. Social media, and Facebook in particular, are seeing a rise in the number of tactics used to spread malware to computers.
Read more about this topic: Grayware