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China and Russia produce more than 50% of Internet threats

BitDefender has announced the publication of its H1 2011 E-Threat Landscape Report, a study regarding worldwide malware, spam and phishing trends.

In terms of producing and hosting malware, China is found to be number one, accounting for more than 31%, followed by Russia with almost 22% and Brazil with more than 8%.

The report presents an in-depth analysis of the security threat landscape over the last six months, between January and June 2011, and also provides predictions for the coming months. The countries most affected by threats are France and the United States, which account for more than 25% of the global malware incidents logged by BitDefender. During the first six months of 2011, more than 500 000 computers in France have been exposed to various families of malware, ranging from average rogue antivirus scanners to devastating malware such as the Sality or Downadup families.

“The study surveys the most critical aspects of data security in conjunction with the Internet use, social networking and recent major corporate breaches”, says Catalin Cosoi, head of Online Threats Lab at BitDefender. “BitDefender predictions for the rest of this year are that mobile malware will increase with 400%. On top of that we estimate a 30% increase of the unique samples of PC malware to the end of the year. Most of these e-threats will be related to the emergence of the first technical previews of Windows 8. In terms of botnets and corporate security we are expecting at least one major data breach per month in the next future,” concluded Cosoi.

Another important conclusion of the research is that 50% of the most important malware threats distributed worldwide consisted of Trojans. Furthermore, casino spam is on the rise as the Sality-supported Maazben botnet increases. In terms of social engineering scams, the top phished institutions and services during the first half of the year are PayPal, eBay and World of Warcraft.

The study was conducted through BitDefender worldwide users, and surveys the most critical aspects of data security in conjunction with internet use, social networking and recent major corporate breaches.

The full report is available here http://www.bitdefender.com/site/view/BitDefender-E-Threats-Landscape-Report.html

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