Malware of the Day

It seems that most malware served up by cyber-criminals has a shelf-life of only 24 hours. PandaLabs said that 52% of the 37,000 virus samples they get each day will never be seen again on any other day.

I'm not surprised. Serial variant production lines have been pumping out new malware samples in industrial quantities. Back in early 2007 I released a whitepaper for IBM covering the mechanisms many of the drive-by-download sites were using to create and deploy "unique" malware samples on a per victim visit basis. I'm just glad that one of the anti-virus companies has "confessed" to the problem.

Unfortunately the problem is only going to get worse, and these "cloud-based" service proposals are probably going to provide as much protection against the real botnet threat as a real fluffy-white cloud does against a bullet.

I blogged in more detail on the topic over at the Damballa site. Half of New Viruses Only Useful to Cyber-criminals For A Single Day.