Trojans Grew Critically in Q2 2007

The second quarter of 2007 saw massive increase in Trojans. They accounted for 83 percent of all new malware arrivals while constituting 26 percent of infections that Panda Software's online scanner, ActiveScan detected. Thus trojans form a critical part of the new malware model.

In 2006, trojans accounted for just 22 percent of total infections that ActiveScan detected, but they represented 33 percent with respect to adware. This trend, however, changed during the first six months of 2007. trojans as the malware that produced most infections replaced adware. In Q2 2007, trojans were the most common malicious code on people's PCs.

Trojans that control global botnets are mainly of two types namely, the Sdbot and Gaobot, which created 80 percent of bots during the first three months of 2007. Other malwares that emerged on low scales were Oscarbot, IRCbot or Rxbot, said PandaLabs.

Until now, bots were commonly under the control of IRC servers. Such servers helped attackers to throw commands while they would hide their anonymity in the chat servers. But now web consoles using HTTP control the bots. In 2006, PandaLab's detection of new threats found bots to represent 13 percent of the attacks. Of those attacks, Sdbot and Gaobot families constituted 74 percent of the threats.

ActiveScan's detection of infections found that adware caused 24 percent of them. With this, adware was the number two damaging malware in Q2 2007. Other malicious codes responsible for most of the infections were worms at 9 percent and backdoors at 5 percent.

Among the recent malware that emerged during the second quarter of 2007, worms constituted 8 percent while adware accounted for 5 percent. These two categories of malware had a large number of detections although they were much lower than the level of trojans in that period.

The successful circulation of trojans has many reasons. The most important one is that they are the best tools for stealing sensitive information. Cyber criminals use them to earn financial returns that forms the main motivation for them, explained Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs. HNS published this in news on July 11, 2007.

Related article: Trojans to Target VoIP in 2006

» SPAMfighter News - 7/23/2007