"Facebook is commonly used for the same thing. These sites solved one of the big problems malware writers had: how do they get their malware out to you," said Marcus. "It's more important than ever that our technology keeps pace with these kinds of threats, because everything is being distributed through Web 2.0 sites these days."

It's not just social networking sites being targeted, said Marcus. Gaming sites are an increasing target as well. With whole economies developing around online games such as World of Warcraft, through the selling or trading of objects and levels, malware writers are taking note. Also, as people tend to reuse the same username/password combination for numerous logins, if malware writers get it once they can exploit it elsewhere as well.

"The amount of malware is being written because of the amount of money they can steal, and because they can do it with impunity, with very little likelihood of being caught," said Marcus.

McAfee is hoping to give people the tools to fight back with its recently released 2009 line of consumer-level security software. Madhurima Pawar, senior product manager in McAfee's consumer strategy and marketing group, said McAfee's goal with its 2009 line was to be instant, silent, and complete.

Pawar touted McAfee's speed of updates, promising instant definition updates for new threats compared to five to 15 minutes for rival Symantec. Also new is Active Protection. If a file passes the local database but is still deemed suspicious, a fingerprint is taken and is pinged against McAfee's backend server. The process will be seamless for the user, promised Pawar.