In first three months of the year, malware circulating in cyberspace reached a four-year high and is on a pace to reach 100 million samples by year's end, McAfee says in its quarterly threats report.

“In the first quarter of 2012, we have already detected 8 million new malware samples, showing that malware authors are continuing their unrelenting development of new malware," Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs, said in a statement.

“The same skills and techniques that were sharpened on the PC platform are increasingly being extended to other platforms, such as mobile and Mac," he added.

Contributing to the proliferation of malware is the arrival of new kits for creating malicious software, Adam Wosotowsky, a messaging data architect at McAfee Labs, said in an interview with PCWorld.

The most common kits for creating malware have been based on the and packages, but on botnets built on those models have prodded cyber criminals to seek alternatives.