IE Exploitation - Most Critical Cybercrime Threat in March 2010

Spyware software provider Kaspersky Lab, on April 12, 2010, issued its latest report of vulnerability and malware statistics.

The IT threat landscape, in the month of March this year, evolved significantly, as new programs now account for more than 50% of Kaspersky's top 20 list of the malicious programs identified on the Internet, and the variants of Trojan continue to rule, according to March 2010 statistics.

Along with these findings, the security vendor also logged Gumblar, the now notorious Trojan downloader, which is too hitting the charts. This Trojan continues to be the most fertile malicious software on the global Internet threat landscape.

According to experts, Gumblar is basically a botnet which infects infected visitors of infected websites and Web servers to install malicious code on the PCs. This eventually results in redirecting Google searches of the end-users to bogus websites.

However, IE vulnerability issue, according to Kaspersky report, was the major event that took place in March, with the publishing of somewhat meticulous description of a flaw which was detected to be there in Microsoft's popular Web browser's versions 6 and 7.

In fact, Exploit.JS.CVE-2010-0806.i and Exploit.JS.CVE-2010-0806.b, two versions of the exploit, made their way into second and tenth please, respectively, making up for 199 484 attempted downloads during the month.

According to Kaspersky, though software vendors quickly patch such flaws in software programs, some computer users are now also not installing these updates on their systems in time.

Furthermore, the veteran firm has also noted that cyber goons are increasingly exploiting the facts that users are too naïve and gullible. Ransomware and rogue antivirus solutions are the most apt examples that can be cited being used by cyber goons in March 2010.

With regards to its findings, Kaspersky recommends computer users to patch their system regularly so as to keep off cybercriminal attempts abusing the most recent software vulnerabilities.

No matter whatever browser is there on the system, all it needs is updating it at regular intervals. Experts added whether it is Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or any other browser, there is always a mechanism of updating them, provided the user permits it to happen.

Related article: IE & Gmail Show Up with Alarming Vulnerabilities

» SPAMfighter News - 4/28/2010