2007 Is Record Year For Cyber-Viruses

Here's a bit of bad news for those of us who love to "surf" the internet. It seems that the number of computer viruses (viruses, trojans, worms, etc.) that have been detected now is over one million, according to the security firm Symantec.

In the latest edition of their Internet Security Threat Report, Symantec reports that 1,122,311 different computer viruses or other malware have been detected, and the problem is growing exponentially. Nearly two thirds of these programs (711,912) were created in 2007.

These programs are no longer just created by some teenage computer geek with a twisted sense of humor or a grudge against the world. Most of them are created now by cyber-criminals who are out to steal whatever they can -- they're just doing it with a computer instead of a gun now.

The vast majority of these insidious programs are still aimed at PCs running Microsoft Windows. If this rate of growth continues (and there's no reason to believe it won't), there will easily be over 2 million of the programs by the end of 2008.

Those are some pretty scary statistics.