Trend Micro Reveals The Most Malicious Programs of 2010

Trend Micro the security company has disclosed the most widespread malicious programs of 2010, with the company's list including the Zeus, Stuxnet and Koobface, among others.

Reports Trend Micro through its blog dated December 29, 2010 that Senior Threat Researcher David Sancho indicated that with 2010 approaching its end, he thought that he'd recapitulate the malware trends which inflicted the year.

First, there was the Stuxnet worm that displayed outstanding capacity due to its sophistication as well as utilization in cyber-espionage. The malware is an extremely complicated, efficient, and treacherous program, which was first detected during June 2010. Apparently, it's the most favorite code of Western national governments that used it to unleash disruption in Iran's nuclear plans.

Furthermore, an extremely tricky rootkit the 'Allurion' or 'TDSS' too managed in having many computers encounter blue-screen errors during February 2010 after a fresh Microsoft update altered each and every file it utilized for contaminating systems.

Meanwhile, Zeus that's a botnet toolkit of DIY (Do-It-Yourself) type also became extremely acceptable on the underground cyber crime market. It's known to have produced numerous botnets, which seized huge money out of the accounts of both corporate and home users.

One more threat within the list is W32.Koobface, which's a Facebook anagram and a virus, which proliferates mainly via social-networking websites, as well as utilizes hijacked PCs for building a file-sharing P2P botnet.

Additionally, there was the SpyEye malware kit, much like the Zeus in numerous ways. Armed with builder software, it develops bot Trojans for executables having a panel for Web-control along with configuration file to establish a C&C (command-and-control) infrastructure for a bot-network.

Eventually, the botnet Bredolab, which was utilized for disseminating other malicious programs, served like a malware-installing system. This too was outstanding as police in the Netherlands shut it down during September 2010 following the accumulation of massive dollars by the Georgian builders of the botnet.

Thus remark the security researchers that the malware menace isn't receding, rather it is expanding. Year-on-year, online crooks create fresh malware programs of dangerous nature; therefore users should remain vigilant for keeping such threats at bay.

Related article: Trend Micro Detects Spam Mail Declaring World War III

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