Infected computers compromised for 300 days

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Around half of malware-infected IP addresses remain infected for at least 300 days, according to research.

That percentage rises to 80 per cent if the minimum time is reduced to a month.

So claims Trend Micro, which reckons that one quarter of the IP addresses in its study belonged to enterprise users.

In the report, Trend Micro said that because a single IP address could be a single gateway to multiple machines in a network, the actual number of enterprise machines infected could be much higher.

The report observed that in 2009 virtually all malware was used by cyber criminals to steal sensitive information. The research also looked at what was happening when machines were compromised and formed part of a wider botnet.

When it comes to information harvesting and financial and identity theft, the most dangerous botnets were Koobface, Zeus and Clampi.

Botnets also controlled more compromised machines than the industry previously believed, with more than 100 million computers under control – representing more computing power than the entire world’s supercomputers, according to the research.

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