Trojans Horses Hacker’s Favorite in August

During August 2007, Trojan horse and adware became the most powerful menaces, as per information from the Panda ActiveScan online anti-virus solution. And as per experts, the Trojan horse was the hacker's favorite malware last month.

Normally, trojans penetrate a computer when a particularly designed Web page is visited or if an affected file is transferred. Contrary to a virus, a Trojan does not strike directly and disenable the infected computer, rather, it executes specifically aimed attacks.

Adware caused 25% and trojans caused 26% of all contamination discovered. This emphasizes the tactics of hackers to utilize this kind of malware for monetary profit, clarified PandaLabs.

Worms were at the third spot for being most effective kind of malware, perpetrating more than 8% of attacks. The other kinds of malware used to infect users' PCs were backdoors (over 3.55%), bots (2.51%), diallers (around 3%), and spyware (nearly 3%).

Leading the top ten chart of the particular malware most active in August was Downloader.MDW, informs PandaLabs, according to September 5, 2007 edition of ITWeb.co.za.

Ranking two and three were two latest malware: the virus ZlFake.A.Fourth and the ZLFake.A.drp Trojan. Moving down one place since July 2007 was the Lineage.BZE Trojan created to rob login ID's. The fifth spot holder Brontok.H has also moved down from July 2007.

Jumping four places ahead of its tenth position, the SuperFast Potentially Unwanted Program (PUP) is now in the sixth spot. The Sdbot.ftp script, utilized by Sdbot worms to affect systems, has slid down to the seventh spot. The eighth ranking Puce.E worm is yet another malware that turned more dynamic in August 2007. Ranking the lowest in the list at ninth and tenth position are the Trojan duos, Perlovga.A and Dropper.UN.

The August 2007 data are very similar to those noted in July, indicating that the main economic objective of malware designers remains the same, stated Luis Corrons, PandaLabs' Technical Director, according to news on September 5, 2007 by Webuser.co.uk.

The adaptability of trojans makes them truly suited for this intent. Hence, it is does not come as a shock that these malware threats lead the rating of the most active menaces, concluded Corrons.

Related article: Trojans to Target VoIP in 2006

» SPAMfighter News - 9/19/2007