McAfee has catalogued more than 1.2 million unique samples of malware in the first half of 2009, putting this year well on course to smash last year's record in malware creation. In the first half of 2008 McAfee has identified around 500,000 unique pieces of malware while in the second half of 2008 McAfee saw one million pieces, arriving at a total of 1.5 million unique pieces of malware for the full year 2008.

"In the first half of 2009, we have seen about three times the unique malware discovered in the same period in 2008. This tremendous growth is a signal of daunting times for users, as malware infiltrates more and more of the platforms we trust," said Dave Marcus, Director of Security Research and Communications at McAfee.

According to the report, 30-40 percent of all password stealing Trojans focus on gaming and virtual worlds, illustrating the high profit potential of virtual goods. Also, 80 percent of all banking emails are fraudulent. The report also states that average loss per victim from phishing is $866.