Kaspersky Labs has forecast that there will be a ten-fold increase in new malicious code in circulation by the end of 2008, an increase of more than 20 million from 2007.
New signatures in the Kaspersky database numbered around 250,000 in 2007, and it predicts that one million new malware signatures will be added in 2008.
"In addition to the quantity, the quality of malicious programs is also improving," said Kaspersky senior technology consultant David Emms.
"New and more complex samples, such as the notorious Zhelatin (the storm worm), are emerging that demonstrate a wide range of hostile behaviour and distribution methods," he added.
According to analysts the number of new malicious programs recorded on the internet in 2007 including viruses, worms and Trojans amounted to more than two million.
This represents a four-fold increase on the results for 2006. The overall volume of detected malware came to 354GB.
"Hackers are getting much more sophisticated in creating their code, making detection much more difficult," said Simon Heron of Network Box.
"Companies like Kaspersky are spotting this stuff and are able to identify it, but it does require a much more thoughtful and much more intensive way of analysing the code.
"You can't just look at the pattern much anymore - you'll have to look at more sophisticated tail tales of how the system has been infected," he added.
