Sophos has identified 23,864 malware threats, up from 9,450 on this time last year and are discovering around 5,000 web pages that spread malware every day.

The problems are not limited to just untrustworthy sites, legitimate, mainstream web sites are being hacked to spread malware.

While malware is a growing problem for users of Windows operating systems, there is little evidence of the problem affecting users of Apple Macs running OS X or PCs installed with Linux.

If you’re using windows it is paramount that you have a recently updated anti-virus program and limit scripting. I recommend only browsing the web with Firefox and use NoScript. For anti-virus, I recommend NOD32.

[Malware a growing problem for Windows users, not Apple Mac users]

Tags: apple, mac os x, apple mac os x, microsoft, microsoft windows, windows vista, malware, spyware, virus, security