BitDefender Presents Top Ten E-threats for H1-2009

According to the "E-Threats Landscape Report" of BitDefender for January-June 2009, in attempts to spread their presence across the whole world, cyber criminals are employing malicious software in every way that they find feasible.

The security company states in its list of e-threats for H1 (first half) of 2009 that the most dominating malware was TROJAN.AUTORUNINF.GEN by contributing 31% of all e-threats during the period. The Trojan represents a widely proliferated family of malicious programs that employs the Autorun malware on removable drives and shared folders for spreading infection, says BitDefender. Interestingly, the Trojan also topped BitDefender's monthly list of e-threats during the period

Furthermore, No.2 position was occupied by Win32.Worm.Downadup.Gen, popularly known as Conficker. This malware, according to BitDefender, infected about 13% of the world's PCs. Security experts analyze that the Conficker virus infects the computers of a network by exploiting a security flaw in the Windows Server software. Successful exploitation allows the execution of remote code in the presence of active file-sharing.

The virus, based on its particular version, might proliferate through removable drives and could be inserted in the system through the manipulation of weak passwords. It renders many vital security software and system services inoperable while downloading arbitrary codes.

Next on the list is TROJAN.WIMAD.GEN.1 that contributed 13% of all e-threats detected by BitDefender in H1-2009. A notable characteristic of this Trojan, according to the security company, is that while the ASF (Advanced Systems Format) program runs, a window pops up in the browser to a particular Internet site, which downloads malware.

Following Trojan Wimad are Trojan.Skimtrim.HTML.A and TROJAN.AGENT.AKXM positioned at No.4 and No.5 respectively, contributing 11% and 10% of all malware that BitDefender detected during H1-2009.

However, Trojan.Autorun.AET and WORM.AUTORUN.VHG are also listed on the BitDefender e-threats list as the sixth and seventh malware programs respectively contributing 7% and 5% of all malicious codes.

Positioned at No.8 is Packer.Malware.NSAnti.1, which contributed 4% of all malware that BitDefender detected for the first half of 2009.

Additionally, two other malicious trojans namely TROJAN.SPY.AGENT.NXS and Trojan.JS.PZB also resulted in significant damage to users' systems during H1-2009.

Related article: BitDefender Releases March Malware List

» SPAMfighter News - 8/24/2009