More of Trojans in Cyber Crime Strategies

Trojans accounted for 74 percent of malware variants in first quarter of 2007, according to a report by PandaLabs. This was 20 percent higher than the global figures for 2006 and 17 percent more than in the Q4 of 2006.

This indicates that trojans is the new principal weapon for cyber crime techniques. This malware is very popular because it helps in stealing passwords, e-mail addresses and other sensitive data.

Cyber crooks tend to plant a large number of variants of a particular Trojan program over a very short time period to infect the maximum number of personal computers in the same attack. That has made trojans the single most malware with largest number of fresh variants in successive months, explained Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs. Net-security published this in news on April 24, 2007.

PandaLabs' report further said that a malicious code called Cimuz.EL accounted for 57 percent of all malware in circulation during the recent few days. Financialmirror published this, second week of April 2007.

In March this year the leading Trojan virus was Trojan-Spy.HTML.Bankfraud.ra. This Trojan is a phishing program and millions of its copies spread out all over the world affecting thousands of computer users.

Worms were second after trojans accounting for 13 percent of total variants, which grew by 8 percent in comparison to 2006. Other malware categories with large number of new variants were adware accounting for 10 percent and spyware accounting for 2 percent.

Both adware and spyware are the most widely used malware. They are relatively in low numbers in comparison to trojans but that does not mean they are in less use. Actually their means of distribution is more silent and their damage less visible. Consequently, they remain on computers for an extended time and criminals don't find it necessary to plant new variants, Corrons added. Net-security published this in news on April 24, 2007.

The "Other" malware category had lesser number of new variants. These were PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs), viruses, hacking tools, dialers and other harmful programs. According to analysis these undesirable malware programs show constant regression every successive quarter.

Related article: More Requests For Better E-Mail and Spam Control

» SPAMfighter News - 5/4/2007