Twelve Million Zombie Computers Since January

Twelve million computers have been brought into botnets since January, according to a new report — and 18% of all zombie machines are in the US.

A new report from security company McAfee says that since January an estimated 12 million computers have been infected with malware and turned into zombies, making them part of botnets, and that these zombie numbers have increased by 50% since last year.

At 18%, the US hosts the largest number of infected machines, followed by China with 13%.

Jeff Green, senior vice-president of McAfee, said:

“The massive expansion of these botnets provides cyber-criminals with the infrastructure they need to flood the web with malware."

"Essentially, this is cyber-crime enablement."

Meanwhile, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (DTT) is saying in a new paper that the cyberthreats grow ever stronger, and urgent action is needed.

Greg Pellegrino, who is a global public sector industry leader at DTT, told the BBC:

"This issue is moving so quickly, and with so much at stake economically and in terms of safety and security for people, we don’t have 100 years to figure this out."

"We are seeing this change from protecting the internet to a conversation about how we succeed and prosper in cyberspace."

"Security spending is growing at a rate never seen before while the threat environment is growing at a pace of 40% a year.”

"In terms of volume and severity of incidents, the math doesn’t work and we have to come up with a different approach that requires public and private sectors working together."

All this comes as President Obama is preparing to release a review into cybersecurity, which his administration has made a priority.