Fortinet Disclosed Top Ten Security Threats For February 2008

Fortinet, the company provides solutions of UTM (Unified Threat Management) announced on March 3, 2008, the top ten security threats in Feb 2008.

According toFortinet, the families of mass-mailing worms, MyDoom and MyTob were most active in February representing the greater part of total malware attacks in the month, as reported by DANIWEB on February 3, 2008.

Fortinet said that Trojan Pushdo!tr's individual contribution through compressed file attachments containing porn comprised an aggressive attack lasting for two days. With this the Pushdo worm entered the Top Ten list of malware in February 2008.

According to Fortinet, the most dangerous Pushdo Trojan occupied the sixth position due to massive attack for three days in end January 2008 and later on conducted a two-day peak attack in mid-February 2008.

Fortinet also said that in February 2008, there was a major interchange in positions among the most frequently observed threats while an introduction of the two malware variants, Netsky and MyTob, made a mark in the Top Ten list.

According to comments by Derek Manky, a Security Research Engineer at Fortinet, accessible malware that mutate have allowed worm families like MyTob to flourish and make a notable presence in present time threat landscape, as reported by DANIWEB on February 3, 2008.

The February 2008 Top Ten security threats from Fortinet's research include Netsky, MyTob, HTML/Iframe_CID! exploit, Pushdo, and the Storm worm as the five variants at the highest positions.

The next individual threats down the line were MyDoom, Bagle, Agent, Grew, and Trojan W32/Istbar.PK!tr.dldr. The Valentine's Day in February 2008 was another reason that pushed more malicious code and spam during the month.

Fortinet suggested that the total amount of spam mails increased significantly in February 2008, typically around the Valentine's Day. Manky said that the most genuine e-cards arrive as a link to the site that hosts the e-card, using a distinct ID, instead of as an attachment, as reported by itvarnews around mid- February 2008.

Manky also said that in the dark alleys of the cyber world not everyone connected to the Internet is a friend. In January 2008, according to Fortinet, malware and spam were over 11% of all threats.

Related article: Fortinet Pinpoints Ten Biggest Threats

» SPAMfighter News - 3/11/2008