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Fortinet Finds SpyEye One of the Ten Most-Widespread Threats of February 2011

Security Company Fortinet's list of ten most prevalent malicious programs within its Threat Landscape Report found the entry of the SpyEye network of bots like never before during February 2011, suggesting that cyber-crime gangs across the globe probably shifted from the use of the Zeus botnet.

Remarking about this fresh occurrence, Senior Security Strategist Derek Manky at Fortinet stated that the company expected to observe the same kind of operation via the SpyEye botnet like regular masquerading of data along with C&C transmissions. According to him, SpyEye bot herders were as well striving for advancing their product so far as automation and management were concerned that was apparent from the fresh Automatic Transfer System of the bot. Marketwire.com published this on March 2, 2011.

In the meantime, aside from SpyEye that was on No.5 at 2.9%, other malicious programs, which occupied positions on the list, were HTML/Iframe.DN!tr.dldr at 14.0%, JS/Feebs.A@mm at 9.4%, W32/Injector.fam!tr at 9.1% and W32/Netsky.P@mm at 2.9% ranked as Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively.

Additionally, W32/MyDoom.M@mm at 2.4%, W32/ALMANAHE.Z!tr at 1.9%, W32/Virut.A at 1.8%, Adware/PlatriumSA at 1.3% and JS/Crypt.CRA!tr at 0.9% comprised the other malicious programs that occupied positions on No.6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 respectively, Fortinet reports.

Worryingly, however, the company discovered that along with malware writers profusely doing their malicious activities during February 2011, spammers too remained similarly active. For example, the U.S got an estimated 12.59% of the total e-mail junk during February 2011 followed with Japan at 9.14%, France at 5.45%, Taiwan at 3.53% and Italy at 3.21%.

And considering that malware writers as well as spammers were busy, it isn't surprising that phishers were active too. The seeming outcome thus was of fresh phishing e-mail campaigns flowing during February 2011, the security company observes. One phishing campaign attacked credit card owners wherein users were told that their accounts infringed on policies whereas the remaining 2 phishing scams enticed users into joining fake employments involving money-laundering.

In conclusion the report states that following so many years, e-mail threats haven't indeed been abandoned since attackers very much play the big game of phishing.

Related article: Fortinet Pinpoints Ten Biggest Threats

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