Money Was The Main Motive Of Most Cyber Assaults During May

Adware and trojans were accountable for 49.8% of all malware infections PandaLabs detected during this May. Particularly, trojans were behind 26.14% of assaults, whereas adware reached 23.7%. Help Net Security published this on May 31, 2007.

April 2007 observed a slight increase in attacks comprising spyware (3.03%), and bots (3.37%). Both spyware and adware are used for making monetary gains through phishing. Likewise, backdoor trojans made up 5.36% of the entire infections.

Other kinds of malware like dialers and worms made up 3.74% and 9.46% of all infections, respectively.

"Creators of nasty code have shifted their focus on spreading the kinds of malware, which can bring monetary returns. There's been a decline in traditional worms or viruses that were the main cause for the wide scale epidemics in the past," confirms PandaLabs' technical director Luis Corrons. Help Net Security published this on May 31, 2007.

"Cyber crooks look for profits while carrying out malware assault. In every infection these hackers manage to intersperse malevolent codes on the machines of users, thereby increasing the chances of making money via pilfering confidential data, sending spam, commandeering PCs, and visiting the websites selling specific products, etc. Corrons explained this in news that Networking News published on May 31, 2007.

MSNPhoto.A remained on top of the list of top ten malware during May 2007. MSNPhoto.A is a novel MSN Messanger virus, which attempts to dupe users in to downloading it via using messages referring to US' president.

KillAV.FW, a Trojan horse designed for stealing secret information from PCs, remained at second slot, where it was during April as well. Brontok.H remains amongst the most frequently found worms and it escalated to third slot in May's ranking. Downloader.NOE was the Trojan that got fourth slot in this ranking.

A worm Puce.E that spreads itself through P2P networks held fifth slot, followed by Donwloader.NZR - new Trojan, which came at sixth position in this ranking. Donwloader.NZR Trojan is designed for downloading malware's other strains on to a compromised machine.

Sdbot.ftp - the script used by the worms of this family for downloading them through FTP - dropped to seventh place, that was two places down from previous month. Last three positons were held by three malware namely, Agent.FCA Trojan, Dropper.UN Trojan, and Downloader.OCJ Trojan.

Related article: Man Sues and Wins against ISP for Spamming Mail

» SPAMfighter News - 6/12/2007