Trojan Infection Widespread In August 2010, Says Gfi Software

Leading vendor for IT solutions GFI Software, on September 2, 2010, declared the ten malware threats that were most prevalent during August 2010. According to its collected statistics, Web surfers encountered attacks during the entire period mainly from the identical Trojan malware items which had been into existence since several months.

Indeed, in accordance with the report, there was no change in the sequence of the 4 highest ranked threats since July 2010. The Trojan.Win32.Generic was detected as the top most threat, declining slightly from 29.08% and 27.16% of all infections reported during July 2010 and June 2010 respectively to 25.11% of all infections during August 2010.

Moreover, the No.2 threat detected in August 2010 was an information-stealing Trojan, Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen coming in several versions. Thereafter, on No.3 was Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra, detected to be a general malware for various malicious codes which is capable of contaminating 32 and 64 bit Windows loadings.

Other malware threats completing GFI's Top Ten List were INF.Autorun (v) at 3.27%, Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 at 2.01%, BehavesLike.Win32.Malware (v) at 1.04%, Worm.Win32.Downad.Gen (v) at 0.96%, Trojan.Win32.Malware.a at 0.93%, Trojan.Win32.Meredrop at 0.92%, and Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v) at 0.84%.

Reports the security company that the ten topmost threats indicate the frequency in which certain malicious program was spotted. Their risk intensity are categorized from medium to high depending on one of the criteria that GFI Labs established i.e. technique of installation. Additionally, most of these malware programs spread via social engineering or covert installations.

Stated GFI Labs manager Francis Montesino heading the company's malware processing group, malware detections in August 2010 suggested that people running botnets were still looking to contaminate computers as well as utilize them for distributing junk e-mails. InfoSecurity Magazine published this in news on September 6, 2010.

Montesino further stated that his organization's ThreatNet detections during August 2010 also matched what other companies reported during the recent weeks that an immense amount of traffic associated with fake security software circulated.

Such software was known as scareware and GFI Software was observing a large number of infections from the installers and downloaders, which were related to such fake security software, the manager added.

Related article: Trojans to Target VoIP in 2006

» SPAMfighter News - 9/14/2010