Kaspersky Lab (www.kaspersky.com) has released its annual "Kaspersky Security Bulletin,"which provides the overall malware and cyber-threat statistics for 2012.

The data analyzed in the report was obtained using the Kaspersky Security Network (KSN), the cloud-based infrastructure used by Kaspersky Lab products to report telemetry and to deliver instant protection in the forms of blacklists and heuristic rules, which are designed to catch the newest threats.

The 2012 report revealed significant growth of Mac-specific malware and an explosive growth in the number of threats targeting the Android platform. Overall, Kaspersky Lab’s products detected and blocked more than 1.5 billion web-based attacks in 2012 and more than 3 billion infected files.

At the present time Kaspersky Lab detects and blocks more than 200,000 new malicious programs every day, a significant increase from the first half of 2012, when 125,000 malicious programs were detected and blocked each day on average.

Mac OS X malware continues to increase as Kaspersky Lab’s antivirus experts created 30% more signatures to detect various Mac Trojans this year compared to 2011, the group says. Oracle Java was the most popular vulnerable application targeted by cybercriminals in 2012. The application accounted for 50% of all detected exploit-based attacks targeting vulnerabilities. Adobe Reader ranked second and accounted for 28% of all incidents.