From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

More than 60 percent of Windows PCs scanned by Microsoft’s Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (WMSRT) between January 2005 and March 2006 hosted malware. This according to a new research report released by Microsoft this morning. Since it first debuted in January 2005, WMSRT has removed 16 million instances of malicious software from 5.7 million unique Windows machines. On average, the tool removes at least one virus, Trojan, rootkit or worm from every 311 computers it examines.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” Matt Braverman, who authored the report, told eWEEK. “In addition to the fact that bots are high on the list, we’re seeing a significant amount of new variants everyday. We’re adding detections for about 2,000 new Rbot variants (to the MSRT) with each release. Bots are not only active on computers. It’s something that the attackers are modifying and turning around quickly. They’re moving in, corralling a set of users, stealing information, then moving on to the next target.”