McAfee has now released statistics for rootkits and similar applications during the first quarter and it’s not the most positive one for the Microsoft camp. The number of reported rootkits increased by 15% during the first quarter this year. This isn’t just because the number of rootkits have increased but also that the companies have become better at detecting them. The biggest increase was seen with trojans that use rootkit behavior and the trend is set to continue. The number of new rootkits have gone down, but the number of classical ones have increased instead. More than 2,400 rootkits are known today and during 2007 McAfee expects more than 2,000 new rootkits to be registered.
