PandaLabs: Majority Of New Viruses Only Last 24 Hours

PRESS RELEASE

London, August 12, 2009: Every day, PandaLabs receives nearly 37,000 samples of new viruses, worms, Trojans and other types of Internet threats, 52 percent of which (that is 19,240 on average) spread and try to infect users for just 24 hours. After this, they become inactive and harmless as they are replaced by other, new variants that join the list of new specimens in circulation.

The reason for this lies in hackers' motivation to profit financially from malware. To do this, they try to ensure their creations go unnoticed by users and security solution vendors.

Just 24 hours after they put any strain of malware into circulation, they will modify its code so that it can continue to spread without being detected by security companies.

This explains the significant increase in the number of new threats detected by PandaLabs, which leapt from a total of 18 million in the 20 years from the company's foundation until 2008 to 30 million by July 31, 2009.

According to Luis Corrons, Technical Diretor of PandaLabs, "This is a never-ending race which, unfortunately, the hackers are still winning. We have to wait until we get hold of the malware they have created to be able to analyze, classify and combat it. In this race, vendors that work with traditional, manual analysis techniques are too slow to vaccinate clients, as the distribution and infection span is very short. Panda's Collective Intelligence offers almost real-time protection, significantly reducing the risk window."

About PandaLabs Since 1990, its mission has been to detect and eliminate new threats as rapidly as possible to offer our clients maximum security. To do so, PandaLabs has an innovative automated system that analyzes and classifies thousands of new samples a day and returns automatic verdicts (malware or goodware). This system is the basis of collective intelligence, Panda Security's new security model which can even detect malware that has evaded other security solutions.

Currently, 94% of malware detected by PandaLabs is analyzed through this system of collective intelligence. This is complemented through the work of several teams, each specialized in a specific type of malware (viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, phishing, spam, etc), who work 24/7 to provide global coverage. This translates into more secure, simpler and more resource-friendly solutions for clients.

More information is available in the PandaLabs blog: http://www.pandalabs.com

For more information: Neil Martin [email protected] Tel. 0870 243 0690