47%?!?! That’s pretty dramatic, even with the massive distribution of Microsoft patches this last month. But, we don’t make it up; read more about the source below.

Web viruses decreased 47 per cent in September despite recent high-profile Microsoft vulnerabilities, according to the ScanSafe Global Threat Report.

The report is based on analysis of more than five billion Web requests and more than 10 million internet threats processed by the company in September.

Eldar Tuvey, chief executive of ScanSafe said: ‘We were surprised to see such a drop-off in web viruses during September. All the recent attention on Microsoft vulnerabilities and zero-day exploits, we thought we’d see an increase. Despite the hype, a mass outbreak did not occur in September.’

‘In fact, none of the top 10 web viruses blocked by ScanSafe during the month were exploits of Microsoft vulnerabilities uncovered in September, including the much publicized Vector Markup Language vulnerability. These vulnerabilities were exploited, but the exploits did not occur in high volume,’ said Tuvey.

Read the rest HERE.

We can think of two reasons why this would be. The first (and probably most obvious) is that the majority of viruses targeted the Microsoft vulnerabilities that were patched this last month, making them obsolete (for the most part). The second reason we believe is because of the shift malicious software developers are taking from viruses to spyware. After all, spyware is the number 1 threat on the web now.

Tags: Good on the Net