50% of viruses only last for 24 hours

Research by security firm PandaLabs said that more than half of viruses, worms or trojans exist only for about 24 hours and quickly "molested" into another variant.

While not new variants are always more destructive, this is one way malicious writers are using to bypass users and security vendors.

On average, there are about 37,000 new samples of malicious code every day.(illustration)

According to PandaLabs, within 24 hours after bringing a new strain of malware into operation, their 'fathers' often quickly modify the source code so that this malicious code could continue to spread quickly without blocked by antivirus software.

"This is a race that has no destination but what the hacker is still winning. We still have to wait until we 'catch' one (virus, malicious code), analyze it and find a way to stop them. During that time, hackers had numerous new variants , " said Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs.

But the race is not so cool. According to Panda's disclosure, the company has discovered about 18 million malicious samples in 2008, but only by the end of July 2009, the number of malicious codes they "caught" surpassed 30 million.

On average, every day of 2009 there are about 37,000 new models of malicious code.