A report reveals more than 34 million new malware that has appeared since the beginning of this year 2022
A new year brings with it new cyber threats. According to the Atlas VPN team's analysis, more than 34 million new malware samples have already been detected since the beginning of the year. This means, on average, that hackers created more than 316,000 malware threats per day in 2022.
Malware is a collective term for all types of malware, including computer viruses, worms, spyware, ransomware, and many more. It's one of the main reasons behind hacks and data breaches today.
Looking at malware stats month by month, January saw the highest number of new malware developments. In total, 11.41 million new malware samples were registered in the first month of the year.
In February, new malware samples fell 22% to 8.93 million. It fell again in March by 2% to 8.77 million. However, newly discovered malware threats still reached 29.11 million in the first quarter of 2022.
Although the month of April is not over yet, 5.65 million new malware samples were discovered this month, bringing the cumulative total of malware samples to 1.347.39 million in 2022.
Nowadays, no internet user is safe from malware. Cybercriminals are constantly developing new malware threats to exploit both computers and mobile devices. However, some operating systems are targeted more than others.
Windows users are the most vulnerable to malware infection, with 25.48 million new samples of Windows malware detected year-to-date, most of which are Trojans.
Windows is not only the most popular operating system in the world but it is also known to have many security holes across different versions of its operating systems, which makes it an easy target for cybercriminals.
In contrast, more than 536,000 new samples of Android malware were found. Meanwhile, when it comes to macOS, more than two thousand new malware threats have been registered.