AV-Test.org’s malware count exceeds 22 million

The folks at the independent anti-virus testing body AV-Test.org have been in touch with some interesting statistics.

They are finding more than one million unique malware samples a month, and presently the total amount of unique samples in their malware collection exceeds 22 million.

That will probably seem pretty jaw-dropping to some of you, especially when you consider that that’s almost double what it was a year ago.

Of course, the vast majority of this collection are minor variants of existing malware. Hackers have effectively created a “conveyor belt of crime”, churning out new versions of their malicious software in the hope that it will slip past anti-virus defences.

Whereas in the past, virus writers could spend months honing their malware with the aim that no security product would be able to detect it,…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter, Mastodon, or Threads to read more of the exclusive content we post.


Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.