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Gumblar Resurges on Internet Threat Landscape

As reported by the security firm Kaspersky Lab, Gumblar, the script Trojan-Downloader program, has returned to control the Internet threat landscape in February 2010.

With 453,985 infections, the security firm recorded a dramatic rise in Gumblar.x variant in February. In January 2010, Gumblar altogether vanished from the Internet threat landscape.

At the end of May 2009, the malware struck the headlines by straightforwardly acquiring the No. 1 spot in the top 20 Internet threat rankings by the firm.

According to Kaspersky, Gumblar.x and Gumblar.w, the two new variants of Gumblar, had been identified back in October 2009. Compared to their predecessors, these variants used increasingly sophisticated technologies; 740,836 attempted downloads due to this malware were recorded, as per the news published by infosecurity.com on March 9, 2010.

According to the IT security firm, such a fast resurgence of Gumblar clearly shows the competence of miscreants who rework upon old techniques of attack and come up with new attack vectors.

After Gumblar, the second position is acquired by Trojan.JS.Redirector.l, contributing a total of 346,637 malicious downloads detected in February 2010. One can inject this JavaScript Trojan in an HTML page using SQL injection attack. It may also exist on a compromised website, redirecting users to unexpected websites.

Ranking third, Pegel is yet another Trojan-Downloader program that deserves recognition for its high level activity in February. The program grew nearly six times in February 2010, and has now touched epidemic levels since it was first discovered in January 2010. It was responsible for 198,348 malicious downloads.

The security firm highlights Pegel's similarity with Gumblar as the former also attacks completely genuine websites. The malicious script redirects the user from infected website to a cybercriminal resource. In order to assure that the victim don't suspect, addresses of malicious Web pages display the names of popular websites surfed by people.

Kaspersky's predictions on more sophisticated malware to enter the Internet this year appear quite true from the reports of January and February 2010.

Related article: Gumblar Attack Diverting Online Users from Google Results to Malicious Pages

» SPAMfighter News - 3/17/2010

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