Kaspersky Research finds China as the Top Malware Contributor

Kaspersky Lab, an Internet security company, in its recent research found that in January 2010, Chinese cyber-criminals acted most prolifically in polluting the Internet.

Reportedly, China alone was responsible for 36.2% of all malicious software. Russia was the next greatest contributor with a 5.8% share, Kaspersky revealed.

Moreover, the company found the United States to be the third greatest originator of malware contributing 4.4% of malware during the month.

Following these countries and standing at the fourth spot was India (3.9%) and at the fifth spot was Germany (3.9%).

Other malware contributing nations comprised Egypt (3.2%), Mexico (2.9%), United Kingdom (2.4%), France (2.3%), and Turkey (2.2%). Yet other countries that Kaspersky analyzed were responsible for 32.8% of all malicious software.

According to David Emm, a Research and Analysis Team member at Kaspersky draws attention to the point that these outcomes appear as confusing vis-à-vis certain general beliefs regarding the source from where most malware originate, as reported by Infosecurity-us.com on February 8, 2010.

Yet another interesting discovery the security firm made was that based on its monthly malware figures, it was evident that 7 entries of the most dangerous malicious programs out of the total 8 listed were Trojan programs.

Emm commented that modern cyber-criminals' most widely used attacking tool was the Trojan, preferred more and more for its treacherous character. The programs were responsible for 91% of all notorious threats known on the Internet, as reported by Kaspersky in the second week of February.

The notorious worm Kido that infected around 2,76,021 computers represented the top entry in the list of 20 most prevalent malware. In spite of the major danger from the Kido or Conficker, experts are suggesting the end-users that they must not underrate the threat from Trojans.

Emm said that trojans are often misperceived as not so dangerous compared to worms or viruses like Kido since they were not self-propagating and parasitic in nature. However, they still left a dangerous as well as far-reaching impact. It wasn't just that they drastically increased during the past few years, but they have become highly complicated.

Related article: Kaspersky Released Malware Statistics for September 2008

» SPAMfighter News - 2/15/2010