McAfee Releases Q1-2010 Threats Report

McAfee Inc., on May 18, 2010, released its "McAfee Threats Report: First Quarter 2010", according to which, a USB virus is on No.1 position among the top malicious programs globally. With both organizations and consumers all over the world widely using USB drives, this medium of infection remains a major reason for problem.

Thus, infections associated with AutoRun occupied the first and third places on the list because of the wide usage of removable devices, particularly USB drives.

According to Director of Security Strategy Greg Day for McAfee in EMEA, USB worms such as Conficker proliferated via the traditional method of portable media, as per the news published by eWeek on May 18, 2010.

Furthermore, although the country-wise rates of spam continue to be constant, their subjects differ significantly. As per the latest analysis, a considerable volume of diploma related spam e-mail is emerging from Vietnam, South Korea and China. In this type of spam, fake documents are advertised that supposedly set qualifications for employment as well as other activities.

Meanwhile, over the past five years, countries like the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Colombia, Romania, Brazil and Chile have recorded strong development in the field of Internet. This rapid development along with concentration on access, rather than security, has led to a greater percentage of spam and malware infections.

Moreover, after USB virus and spam, various password-stealing trojans made it to the Top 5 on the threats list. These trojans are unwanted programs, generic downloaders and gaming software which gathers figures anonymously. Different from previous researches, these threats' popularity ranked same globally.

McAfee reported that during Q1-2010, fewer fresh threats were detected in comparison to 2009; however, attackers were adapting to the times. The company apparently got 3.75 Million complaints of fresh exploits and e-threats during Q1-2010 as against 4 Million during the same period in 2009.

Remarking about the findings, senior vice-president and chief technology officer Mike Gallagher of Global Threat Intelligence for McAfee stated that the company's new threat report convincingly showed that spam and malware trends have kept on increasing at its (the security firm's) forecasted rates, as per the news published by PC ADVISOR on May 18, 2010.

Related article: McAfee Alerts Windows about Accessibility Hole in Vista

» SPAMfighter News - 27-05-2010

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