India has emerged as the top destinations for malware spam, virus or Trojan attachment offering links to an infected website along with Colombia, South Korea, Russia and Vietnam, according a report released by security firm McAfee.

According to the McAfee Threats Report, Argentina saw the most variety of spam with a total of 16 different topic areas while Italy saw the least variety with only 6 topic areas. The spam ranged from drugs to lonely women to diplomas.

United States, Italy, Spain, China, Great Britain, Brazil, Germany and Australia were the top targets for delivery status notifications, or non-delivery receipt spam, the report said.

The report also found that globally the malware has reached its highest level ever in the first half of the year. The first six months of 2010 become the most active period for malware creation and there were 10 million new pieces catalogued in the period.

Malware targeting potable devise were the most popular followed by bogus anti-virus software and malware targeting social media. McAfee found that 55,000 new pieces of malware appeared every day and AutoRun malware and password-stealing Trojans were the top two threats.

The spam reached its highest of 175 billion messages per day and since remained at the same level. The report found that the cyber criminal used events like the FIFA World Cup in South Africa to spread spam and search-engine "poisoning".

Mike Gallagher, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Global Threat Intelligence for McAfee said, "Our latest threat report depicts that malware has been on a steady incline in the first half of 2010."