It's a surprise to very few who follow the malware economy closely, but new metrics have arrived that chart <A HREF="http://securitywatch.eweek.com/exploits_and_attacks/malware_avalanche_still_gaining_momentum.html?kc=EWKNLEDP062508C">the continued proliferation of the malware epidemic.</A>

It was hard not to shake your head when anti-virus vendor Symantec reported this spring that it had recorded 711,912 unique threats during the course of 2007, a 468 percent increase compared with 2006, in its twice-yearly Internet Security Threat Report.

However, according to researchers at F-Secure, the problem continues to spiral out of control as trends such as server-side polymorphism and widely available exploit authoring tool kits continue to allow malware writers to create reams of new attacks (or, more precisely, attack variants) at a faster pace than ever before.