Towards the end of the year, AV-TEST, one of the largest anti-malware solution evaluation companies, along with AV-Comparatives, shared some interesting statistics about the growth of malware in 2022. The data shows that there were close to 70 million new malware. samples on Windows, dwarfing that on macOS, which only saw about 12,000 samples. Hence the number of malicious files in Windows is more than 5000 times compared to that in mac. The comparison to Linux is much more convenient for Windows since close to 2 million samples were captured on Linux. However, Windows’ numbers are still more than 60 times higher.

Interestingly, while the total number of malware is certainly very high for Windows, the rate of growth has been steadily declining since September. The right image below shows the monthly increase while the left image shows the total malware and PUA (Potentially Unwanted Applications).

Next up, we have macOS and although the overall software count is relatively low, the growth rate picked up sharply in November and December.

Linux is probably the most impressive as it seems to have completely killed new malware. The growth rate has been very low since June and continues to be so until December.

you can visit AV-TEST’s portal To get more insights through interactive charts.