More than 6m malware samples in first quarter, says McAfee

The first three months of 2011 have been a busy time for cybercriminals, according to a statement released by McAfee. The security company tracked more than 6m unique malware samples during that time, which makes this year’s first quarter the busiest for malware ever.

“It’s been a busy start to 2011 for cybercriminals,” Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs, said in a statement. “Even though this past quarter once again showed that spam has slowed, it doesn’t mean that cybercriminals aren’t actively pursuing alternate avenues,” Weafer continued. “We’re seeing a lot of emerging threats, such as Android malware and new botnets attempting to take over where Rustock left off, that will have a significant impact on the activity we see quarter after quarter.”

According to the statement, malware has overtaken spam attacks as the most widespread form of cybercrime. There were still around 1.5 trillion spam messages a day, but this is said to be less than half than it was a year before.