Adware & Trojans Caused Most Computer Infections, Says PandaLabs

According to PandaLabs, data collected for 'whether infected or not infected websites' during the second week of December 2007 showed that 24.73% of protected PCs and 36.58% of unprotected PCs were infected with malware.

PandaLabs' online anti-virus, ActiveScan, also revealed from its November 2007 statistics that malware responsible for most infections on computers were trojans at 25% and adware at 23%. The same malware prevailed as the most severe threats in the month of October as well.

In a statement for the press, Luis Corrons said that Trojan creators use their malware for a variety of criminal purposes to generate large amounts of profit. They use them either directly to steal information and commit online fraud or indirectly to push out spam mails through botnets by asking the advertisers to pay. Computingnews published the statement in the first week of November 2007.

Discussing adware, Corrons said that it also yields large profits when unscrupulous marketing firms pay its creators to show unsolicited advertisements on consumers' computer screens.

According to PandaLabs, the malicious codes namely Cazdeg.A and MSNWorm.BF were the two greatest threats during the second week of December 2007. The MSNWorm.BF infects through IM (Instant Messaging) when it transmits a message addressing the contacts listed on the user's MSN Messenger. If users view the file and execute its content, the worm makes a copy of itself onto their PC.

The MSNWorm.BF malware also installs the Agent.HBA Trojan on the infected PC to grab information and pass it over to the malware creator. The worm also adds a key to the registry so that it runs whenever the system starts up. It even links to an HTTP address to download further malware and obey malicious commands.

The other dangerously-crafted malicious code in the same week was the Cazdeg.A worm that moves through shared computers in P2P networks for which the worm makes its own copy and pastes it onto a P2P program such as Kazaa, eMule, Ares etc. The worm uses catchy names like Windows Vista crack.scr, Pamela Anderson pictures.scr and YouTube video downloader.scr. It too changes Windows registry to run every time the system starts up.

Related article: Adware And Spyware On A Rapid Increase

» SPAMfighter News - 1/3/2008