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Panda Software is conducting a macro study to evaluate and quantify the true situation with regard to Internet threats. The study’s results, to be published shortly, will offer information such as the actual number of infected computers or the types of threats that are most frequently installed on PCs without the users’ knowledge.
Since this is a worldwide study, Panda Software is asking all users for their collaboration, to gather as much data as possible. To take part in the study, just go to http://www.infectedornot.com and scan your computer with NanoScan and TotalScan.
Panda Software believes this study to be essential due to the new malware dynamic, which has seen threat creators turn their attentions primarily to theft and is causing serious harm to users. Cyber-criminals are no longer interested in causing widely reported epidemics, but rather stealing confidential data that can be used for online fraud or identity theft.
The consequences of the new malware dynamic include:
– More new malware specimens appear every day. In 2006, PandaLabs detected as many new samples as in the previous 15 years combined. Â At present, antivirus laboratories cannot process all the new threats that appear day after day. This results in many computers being infected without users knowledge, even though they might have an updated antivirus installed.
– Cyber-crooks try to infect computers silently, so that neither users nor security companies can detect when new samples are put in circulation. For example, just a few days ago, PandaLabs detected a network of zombie computers made up of 160,000 PCs infected with the Barracuda.A bot, unknown until then.
– The types of malicious code traditionally responsible for large epidemics, like viruses or worms, are being replaced with other criminally-oriented malware such as Trojans, bots or spyware. Some 66 percent of new Trojans that appeared in the first quarter of 2007 were Trojans designed to be used for theft.
– Increased number of malware using “stealth techniquesâ€, like rootkits, packers, etc. Malware specimens that use these techniques are more difficult to detect, and stay longer on computers performing malicious actions. Panda Software has recently launched a free tool for removing rootkits (Panda Anti-Rootkit), available at http://www.pandasoftware.com/about/press/antirootkits
It is the scope of this situation that Panda Software wants to evaluate with the study it is carrying out. Users that want to collaborate with this initiative will find two free antivirus tools: NanoScan and TotalScan. Both applications detect far more malware that traditional antiviruses, as they have been developed with the new “Collective Intelligence†approach in mind. This approach includes automated processing of large quantities of information about programs and files, in a new infrastructure managed by PandaLabs, and real-time communication with users’ computers. This way, the malware scan and detection is performed on Panda Software’s severs, not on the system itself.
At present, NanoScan detects almost 900,000 threats, whereas TotalScan can detect almost a million. They can detect even the threats that slipped past other antiviruses. TotalScan not only detects all types of known and unknown threats, but also disinfects them free of charge.
Panda Software will shortly publish the study’s results at http://www.infectedornot.com
