BitDefender Releases its October Malware Chart

Data security solutions and anti-virus software provider BitDefender announced the ten malware threats on top of its October 2007 charts on October 31, 2007.

BitDefender Labs reported that in October, these top ten threats accounted for 65.56% of the total malware detected. The malware curve for the month was rather flat that continued from the previous months with the top three positions on the monthly top ten threats going to generic signatures, malware that uses the technique of obfuscation or specific infection.

The list's first spot was captured by Trojan downloaders, the malware that carried the Peed Trojan, also called the Storm worm and which was in news recently.

The second spot was taken by a traditional exploit. It is presumed that such was the situation because the traditional nature of the exploit helped it to be the code of a number of worms that tried to infect users' computers but not sufficiently old as a relatively large number of unpatched systems still exist.

The third spot was for Packer.Malware.NSAnti.J. This malware is a program that is packaged with a protection system that malware authors design to evade anti-virus products and to conceal malicious contents. Packer.Malware.NSAnti.J can be identified by the existence of three segments named randomly, which along with the presence of the resources (that may be absent in some instances) at the beginning of the main segment make it recognizable. The malware is capable of spotting virtual PCs, and collapse under them.

Packer.Malware.NSAnti.J contains polymorphic exploit that becomes morphed when garbage instructions are inserted. These instructions are long loops that slow down the system. Also, the construction of the necessary data in a number of steps by adding or subtracting operations also morphs the exploit. In addition, the insertion of garbage leads to the nullification of functions.

In the middle of the malware list lie very old viruses that spread through mass e-mails. This proves that even with extremely reliable computers and backup systems, viruses never really fade out.

Overall, the October month has been rather eventful, commented BitDefender's Viorel Canja. Business Wire published this on October 31, 2007. Canja further said that there were many new viruses and a common trend for even more treacherous malware that gets updated regularly.

Related article: BitDefender Releases March Malware List

» SPAMfighter News - 11/20/2007