Malware Volume To Double By 2008

The tally of viruses, worms, and Trojan horses is climbing so fast that today's total will double in the next two years, claimed security developer McAfee on Thursday.

The Santa Clara, Calif. company's Avert research labs said that it added the 200,000th threat to its malicious code database this week, a fact that illustrated the ramp-up in malware volume.

"It's remarkable that it took 18 years for our database to reach 100,000 malicious threats, and just under two years to double to 200,000," said Stuart McClure, senior vice president of research and threats, in a statement. "Hackers are releasing threats faster than ever before, with 200 percent more malicious threats per day than two years ago." McAfee added the 100,000th threat to its database in September 2004.

At the current pace -- 2006 should see more than 60,000 new threats, up from the 56,000 during 2005 -- the 400,000 barrier should be broken in under two years, McAfee said.