Supporting the prognosis made by McAfee, Symantec's MessageLabs Intelligence: 2010 Annual Security Report reveal worrying malware trends in 2010 and makes gloomy forecast for 2011.

According to the report new malware in 2010 was detected at an alarming rate. The MessageLabs press release explains, "In 2010, there were more than 339,600 different malware strains identified in malicious emails blocked, representing over a hundred-fold increase since 2009. This massive increase is largely due to the growth in polymorphic malware variants, typically generated from toolkits that allow a new version of the code to be generated quickly and easily."

The report clearly outlines two major findings that indicate an overall trend in malware. As businesses and consumers continue to migrate to the cloud, and as users spend more time online--whether from a desktop or laptop PC, or from a tablet or smartphone--the Web is emerging as a primary platform for attacks.

The MessageLabs report clarifies, "For 2010, the average number of new malicious Web sites blocked each day rose to 3,066 compared to 2,465 for 2009, an increase of 24.3 percent. MessageLabs Intelligence identified malicious web threats on 42,926 distinct domains, the majority of which were compromised legitimate domains."

As nefarious as botnets are today, MessageLabs predicts that they could have some new tricks in 2011. "It is predicted that in 2011 botnet controllers will resort to employing steganography techniques to control their computers. This means hiding their commands in plain view--perhaps within images or music files distributed through file sharing or social networking web sites. This approach will allow criminals to surreptitiously issue instructions to their botnets without relying on an ISP to host their infrastructure thus minimizing the chances of discovery.”