How much malicious code is really out there?

The Internet is evolving incredibly fast. We are always warning users about cyber-threats, but many users do not take this seriously. One problem is new users who don’t have much experience – there are more and more every day, and they don’t think viruses are a real problem. Our survey on the Russian version of Viruslist.com told us that only 25% of users update their anti virus databases every day – this gives lots of opportunity for new infections!

This morning a friend phoned me saying there is ‘something wrong’ with his computer. He installed a dedicated Internet line a week and a half ago, and at the same time reinstalled his operating system. He didn’t believe his computer could become infected in this short time. I scanned his hard disk using our latest databases, and got the following results. It’s no surprise that the computer was infected – what is maybe surprising is in just a week and a half my friend managed to pick up 78 (!) malicious programs:

Here is a summary of the results:

Trojan – 36
Trojan-Clicker – 2
Trojan-Downloader – 11
AdWare – 26
RiskWare – 3