TECHNOLOGY FOR CHANGE

Panda: Malware Trending Way Up, Rogueware Key Cause

A controversial report now making the rounds from Panda Security states that the number of new malware variants encountered on the open net has more than doubled in the past seven months.

A controversial report now making the rounds from Panda Security states that the number of new malware variants encountered on the open net has more than doubled in the past seven months. The cause, they hypothesize, is a fast-growing arms race between virus writers and computer security providers, designed to exhaust the latter's ability to identify and deploy protections efficiently.

Panda's report notes that a significant fraction of new malware (about half the approximately 37,000 new variants identified each day) seems to be designed to spread for 24 hours or less before deactivating, suggesting that its purpose is research and "threatcasting," rather than exploits. The most popular, and profitable reason for threatcasting is to promote the sale of rogueware: fake anti-virus software purchased by consumers who have become infected by malware distributed by the spurious anti-virus solution provider.

The Panda report has met with criticism from Symantec and others, who dispute aspects of the reasoning behind the projections - notably that the rogueware-based fake anti-virus industry may generate $34 million a month in profit for originators and affiliates.