IBM reported <A HREF="http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22320.wss">an increase in malware volume and sophistication,</A> the rise of exploit leasing and a lower number of vulnerability disclosures versus the first half of 2006 as part of its security statistics report for the first half of 2007. So far for the year, the IBM Internet Security Systems X-Force research and development team has identified and analyzed more than 210,000 new malware samples, already exceeding the total number of malware samples observed over the entirety of 2006.