Most of Top Ten E-Threats Remained Unchanged in May 2010

On June 3, 2010, a provider of security software, Sunbelt Software, declared the top ten widespread malware threats for May 2010. Out of them, 8 of the e-threats were those which had already featured in the April 2010 report, suggesting the behavior-based detection trend.

The Top 10 list is led by Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT, which retained the number one position for the second consecutive month (27.8%). INF.Autorun (v) holds the second position with 3.63% of overall malicious detections.

Tom Kelchner, Sunbelt Software Research Centre Manager, stated that on one hand, there is a constant rise in Trojan donwloaders, while on the other hand, the level of generic detections has gradually rose in the last few months, implying the value of behavioural testing through a "sandbox" technique to put a halt to harmful applications without individual signature updates. This is an effective method to stop zero-day malevolent code, or unknown malware, which is being produced by hackers with greater frequency, as per the news published by securityweek.com on June 3, 2010.

Occupying the third position is Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra (2.14%). This Trojan is a common detection for a large variety of malware that can infect 32- and 64-bit Windows operating systems.

BehavesLike.Win32.Malware (v) (1.95%) is the next e-threat on the list. Following this is Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen (1.78%), a severe cyber attack that can affect even the most sophisticated PC security systems. Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen secretly infiltrates users' systems by using software exploits as well as other security flaws of the hacked system.

Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 (1.35%) holds the sixth position. This Trojan is used to find and steal password. Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 implants keyloggers which tracks keystrokes and send the information so stolen to its operators.

Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v) comes in next on the list. There has been a drastic reduction in its ranking and infection. It came down from second position in April 2010 (3.41%) to seventh position in May 2010 (1.34%).

Also, there are two new additions in the Top 10 list, viz., FraudTool.Win32.AVSoft (v) at eighth position and Trojan.Win32.Agent at number nine with 1.32% and 1.28% respectively.

Finally, Trojan.Win32.Malware (1.25%) stands at tenth position. This Trojan is a generic detection of malware related to Trojan horse programs. There are almost 140,000 malware codes mentioned under this group.

Related article: Most Malware Use File Packing To Escape Detection

» SPAMfighter News - 6/12/2010