Trojans & Adware Accounted for Maximum Infections in November

The online anti-virus, Panda ActiveScan, gathered data that revealed adware and trojans as the key malware responsible for the major amount of computer infections in the month of November 2007. Worms accounting for 9% of all infections ranked the third most dangerous malware in the same month, trailing far behind adware and Trojans. Other malware that caused rest of the detected infections were backdoor with 4%, dialers -3%, spyware -3% and bots -2%.

The data from Panda ActiveScan also revealed that adware and trojans behaved most vibrantly in October as well. They accounted for 23.37% and 25.97% respectively of the lot of infections detected.

Technical Director at PandaLabs, Luis Corrons, said that trojans are used for several kinds of criminal activities that generate huge profits for those who create them. The revenues could come by using the malware to steal information for committing online fraud or by inserting it into spam mails and charging money from advertisers to push out that spam. Computernews published Corrons' statement in early November 2007.

According to Corrons, adware too can be very profitable when unscrupulous marketing enterprises pay the malware creators to pop unsolicited advertisements.

This year in November, 31% of different infections detected have been classified as "others". This group includes multiple types of malware, such as viruses, PUPs, hacking tools etc. While individually they have not caused large amounts of infections, but when combined, they account for a high percentage. This proves that a lot of new types of malware exist today.

In the list of malware that infected most computers, the Downloader.MDW Trojan was on the top. The malware downloads other malware onto systems. The second place went to Lineage.BZE that steals online game passwords. The third position was for the Brontok.H worm that spreads via e-mails and by replicating itself onto the infected PC.

The fourth and fifth places went to Puce.E and Autorun.DZ worms respectively. In the fifth place, the VideoAddon adware displayed pop-up ads. The seventh and eighth places went to Dropper.UN and Perlovga.A worm respectively. And the last positions went to the Hupigon.AZG backdoor and the PC-Prot adware respectively.

Related article: Trojans to Target VoIP in 2006

» SPAMfighter News - 12/17/2007