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Over 30 million new malware samples found in 2022 as cyber threats evolve
April 2022 by Atlas VPN
A new year brings new cyber threats. According to the Atlas VPN team’s analysis, over 34 million new malware samples have already been discovered year-to-date. It means that, on average, hackers have been creating more than 316 thousand malware threats daily in 2022.
Malware is a collective term for all types of malicious software, including computer viruses, worms, spyware, ransomware, and many others. It is one of the key reasons behind hacks and data breaches today.
Looking at the malware statistics month by month, January saw the biggest 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 dropped by 22% to 8.93 million. They decreased again in March by 2% to 8.77 million. However, the newly discovered malware threats still amounted to 29.11 million in Q1 2022.
While April is not over yet, 5.65 million new malware samples have been discovered this month, bringing the total cumulative number of malware samples to 1,347.39 million in 2022.
Windows users are most at risk of new malware
Nowadays, no internet user is safe from malware. Cybercriminals continually develop new malware threats to exploit both computers and mobile devices. However, some operating systems are targeted more than others.
Windows users are most at risk of catching malware, with 25.48 million new Windows malware samples detected year-to-date. Windows is not only the most popular operating system in the world but also is known to have many vulnerabilities across different versions of its operating systems, making it an easy target for cybercriminals.
Never before seen Android malware threats were also identified this year. In total, more than 536 thousand new Android malware samples have been found. Meanwhile, when it comes to macOS, we see over 2 thousand new malware threats.
