Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies - Second Edition

4

The Evolution of Malware

I have always thought of malware as a synonym for “attackers’ automation.” Purveyors of malware seek to compromise systems for a range of motivations, as I described in Chapter 1. Any system that sends and receives email, is used to surf the web, has applications that connect to a network, or takes other forms of input can be attacked, regardless of whether it was manufactured in Redmond, Raleigh, Cupertino, Helsinki, or anywhere else. The AV-TEST Institute, one of the world’s premier independent anti-virus testing labs, based in Germany, has one of the world’s largest malware collections (AV-Test Institute, 2020). They have accumulated this collection over 15 years. “Every day, the AV-TEST Institute registers over ...