Deadly Malware, Viruses and Spam! Oh My!
Deadly Malware, Viruses and Spam! Oh My!
August 1st, 2007: BitDefender’s Top 10 malware list for the first half of the year is out, as is MessageLab’s July Intelligence report, both show an alarming rise in threat levels.
The malware threat is one that businesses face everyday, with increasingly malicious programs preying on user naivety. Widespread infection outbreaks can cause massive productivity losses, information leaks as well as damaged customer relations if a mass mailer accesses a company send-out list.
BitDefender’s analysis showed the top dangers for the year so far have been mass mailers and trojans, with the number one position going to the Peed trojan, accounting for 27% of detected threats. Notably the Top 10 list has reflected a gradual change from viruses to trojans as the top threats, which "presents an interesting trend in data security” said Viorel Canja, head of BitDefender.
The second spot with 21.4% went to Behavior-based Trojans, which are different pieces of malware that behave like trojans, these are detected and blocked pro-actively before being assigned a name.
Top 10 malware list for the first half of 2007
- Trojan.Peed.Gen 27.19%
- BehavesLike:Trojan.Downloader 21.4%
- Win32.Netsky.P@mm 5.62%
- Trojan.Peed.A 2.37%
- Win32.NetSky.D@mm 1.87%
- Win32.Nyxem.E@mm 1.86%
- Win32.Sality.M 1.85%
- GenPack:Trojan.Downloader.Tibs.I 1.33%
- Trojan.Peed.P 1.30%
- Win32.Netsky.AA@mm 1.22%
On the spam front, web security provider MessageLabs has released their July intelligence report, revealing that 20% of all spam emails are now PDF’s. In some of the most recent examples, the PDF documents were created with document protection settings enabled – features that make spam more likely to bypass. “Though PDF files have traditionally been a trusted type of email attachment, we are beginning to see an increase in use for sinister activity,” said Mark Sunner, Chief Security Analyst, MessageLabs.
Israel continued to have the highest spam rate this month with 60.8 percent, with the most significant increase in spam levels occurrinh in China (18.3% rise) followed by the United States (5.9% rise).. This statistic only covers emails that were deemed to have a valid recipient, countless numbers of spam emails are being bounced by invalid addresses.
India remains the region most affected by viruses with an increase of 2.08 percent. It should be noted every country had a rise in virus activity with the exception of Sweden who’s activity actually fell 0.03%. Perhaps the rest of the world needs to take a leaf out of the Swedish book if we are to somehow curb the global trend of rising malware threat levels.