The analysis – which forms part of Panda's 2010 report – shows that 20 million malware strains appeared during the year.
Despite these dramatic numbers, Panda says that the report highlights some good news, as it discovered that the speed at which the number of new threats is growing has actually decreased when compared to 2009.
Every year since 2003, says Panda Labs, new threats grew by at least 100% every year, but in 2010, the increase was approximately 50%.
According to the report, banker trojans still dominate the ranking of new malware that appeared in 2010 (56% of all samples), followed by viruses and worms.
In addition, says Panda, a fairly recent newcomer to the malware landscape, rogueware – defined as fake anti-virus software – already comprised 11.6% of all the malware gathered in the collective intelligence database, and has become a category which, despite only appearing four years ago, has created great havoc among users.
Panda says that Thailand, China and Taiwan are leading the country list with the most viruses, with 60 to 70% of infected computers.
Also during the year, Panda says it witnessed hackers exploit social media, the positioning of fake websites (BlackHat SEO techniques) and zero-day vulnerabilities as its primary methods of infection.
The report also says that 2010 was truly the year of cybercrime, cyberwar and cyberactivism.
Although cybercrime has existed for many years, Panda asserts that cyberwar became a much more active and aggressive part of the malware landscape. The most notorious was Stuxnet, a new worm that targeted nuclear power plants and managed to infect the Bushehr plant, as confirmed by the Iranian authorities.
Panda's report also says that 2010 also witnessed the emergence of new phenomenon called cyberprotests or hacktivism. This phenomenon, made famous by the Anonymous group, is not actually new, says Panda, but grabbed the headlines in 2010 for the coordinated DDoS attacks launched on copyright societies and their defense of WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange.
Panda's research also claims that, given the financial incentive behind many attacks, the most prevalent type of malware in 2010 was the banking trojan, which comprised 56% of all new malware, followed by those perennial favorites viruses (22%), worms (10%), and adware (10%).
Spyware, meanwhile, declined from 6% of all malware in 2009 to just 0.34% in 2010. At the same time, around 1% of threats in 2010 collectively comprised dialers, hacking tools, potentially unwanted programmes, security risks, jokes, or tracking cookies.