Malware ‘Bredolab’ Leads Fortinet’s January 2010 Threatscape Report

In the first week of February 2010, Fortinet has released its January 2010 Threatscape Report.

The report indicates that Bredolab has been leading Fortinet's top 10 malware for the third consecutive month (January 2010). It has grabbed top places on the list with variants at the first and second positions that accounted for around 40% of total malware activity. These variants are detected as - W32/PackBredolab.C! Tr and W32/PackBredolab.D! Tr. The third position is acquired by W32/AutoRun.BBC! Worm.

According to Fortinet, there was no shortage of threat news in January 2010. The most important among the highly publicized attacks was "Aurora" (codenamed) on certain corporations, which include Google as well. This attack was reported in mid-late January 2010.

Fortinet claims that in a few days, this attack has risen to the fourth position on its top ten attacks list for January 2010 - in close proximity with Waledac and Gumblar/Bredolab C&C detections. In fact, it became one of the leading six 'critical' flaws detected in January 2010.

Some new e-threats have made their way in Threatscape Report for January 2010. One of them is Buzus, W32/Buzus.CVCZ! Tr. It has two variants and works by spreading spam through its own SMTP engine. Buzus mark its entry in January 2010 through a purported Christmas greeting card from '123greetings.com,' which is attached as a zip file.

Fortinet further says that Buzus has been around since 2008. In 2009, the security company noted that it was installed on computers through a bot via IRC commands. But its presence on Fortinet's top tem malware list shows that it has been preoccupied over the years to pave way to success.

Besides, Fortinet January 2010 list reports about two interesting spam campaigns. One appeared in the form of a simple message with a link. This spam campaign started on December 1, 2009, and is still going. The other campaign used a social engineering method.

Derek Manky, Project Manager of Cyber Security and Threat Research, Fortinet, analyzed the recent report discoveries and claimed that there was surely no scarcity of threat activity in January 2010, making it clear that 2010 would be yet another thrilling year, as per the news by CNN Money on February 2, 2010.

Related article: Malware Authors Turn More Insidious

» SPAMfighter News - 2/10/2010