Australia, March 17, 2022 — Avast (LSE:AVST), a global leader in digital security and privacy, today shares a list of the top ten most prevalent types of malware. Trojans and banking malware dominated the threat landscape in Australia, with trojans accounting for 32.4% of threats targeting Windows and macOS devices, and 42.7% of banking malware threats targeting Android devices. 

"Trojans have long been one of the most common threats that Australians encounter, often spreading via email, file-sharing sites or illegal software. We want people to enjoy the internet to the fullest, instead of them having to worry with every click. We’re therefore committed to continuously improving our threat detection capabilities," explains Michal Salat, Threat Intelligence Director at Avast. 

In addition to trojans, desktop users also encountered adware, spamming the user with unwanted ads and often capable of stealing information (19%) and file infectors, copying malicious code into files in order to damage them or further spread through the system (9.3%). On the mobile side, trojans (23%) and adware (19.7%) were among the most common threats to Android.

Globally, Trojans were also the malware type desktop users encountered the most last year (28.9%), followed by file infectors (17.4%), which is malware that attacks files with the aim of rewriting their code to permanently damage them or further spread within the system and network. The third most prevalent type of desktop malware worldwide is adware (12.7%), which spams users with large amounts of unsolicited advertising and, in some cases, can collect personal information, track the browsing history or even record keystrokes.

On Android devices, the most prevalent threats globally are adware (49.5%), Trojans (25.9%), and droppers (10.5%), which are malicious programs designed to install a virus on the target system. Moreover, these programs are very difficult to detect.

The top ten desktop threat types Australian users encountered in 2021 also include trojans,  adware, fileinfectors, droppers, password stealers, exploits, remote access trojans (RATs), and worms.

The top ten types of Android malware Australian mobile users came across in 2021 include banking malware, adware, trojans, spyware, droppers and others. 

*Data collected by the Avast Threat Labs from January 1 - December 31, 2021.