Surge in Trojan Attacks in H1 2009, Says IBM

As per IBM's "Internet Security Systems 2009 Mid-Year Trend & Risk Report", which came out in the last week of August 2009, 55% of new malware found by the security vendor in H1 2009 was trojans while Backdoors stood second at 21%.

In its report, IBM finds that when this figure (55%) is contrasted with the 2008's annual report against H1 2009, the distribution of trojans surged by 9% points. In other words, the yearly figure of malware was only 46% in 2008. This means that malware has its modes of distribution like trojans have risen radically during January-June 2009. One important factor behind the high number of Backdoors and particularly trojans in terms of new malware gathered is that a huge volume of new malware nowadays is produced by publicly-available toolkits. IBM states that this rise of trojans will continue as these harmful toolkits are easy to use.

The report also offers the breakdown of the category of Trojans. The Info-stealer accounts for of 27% of trojans found in H1 2009. These trojans spy/steal sensitive information. This class of trojans includes spyware, keystroke loggers and password stealers.

After Info-stealer Trojan, come Downloader trojans which contributed to 17% of the overall threats in H1 2009. These groups of trojans install malware components from a distant website and then download them on the compromised PC.

Standing third on the list of harmful trojans is Dropper Trojan, which was responsible for an overall of 14% of online threats found by IBM during the period. IBM says that Dropper Trojan infiltrates and downloads entrenched malware components onto the compromised system.

Apart from these Trojans, other harmful trojans found by IBM in H1 2009 that left a massive impact on the computer users comprise Injector (4%), Fraud Tool (3%) and Rootkit (1%).

Finally, two more harmful trojans discovered by the security firm during the first half of 2009 include Clicker as well as some less popular groups of Trojans. These all contributed a total of 32% to the malware threats detected by IBM during the period.

Related article: Surge in Spam attack

» SPAMfighter News - 9/14/2009