E-Mail Threats Remain Biggest Malware Concern

Anti-virus software specialist BitDefender put out its list of top 10 malware threats for August 2007, which continued to be dominated by e-mails threats and showed very little change in the order of rankings.

In fact, the only new threat cracking the top 10 is a highly sophisticated rootkit called Trojan.Kobcka.A, which is likely used to hide mass-mailer viruses, according to BitDefender.

"The fact that Trojan.Kobcka racked up 1.24 percent of the total malware detections and made it into our top 10 suggests that we may see it or new variants of it infect even more machines in the coming months," said Viorel Canja, head of BitDefender Labs.

Topping the list was the Peed Trojan, also commonly referred to as Storm.

According to BitDefender, the use of a Windows metafile rendering exploit -- which made its first appearance at the tail-end of 2005 and was patched against in 2006 -- grabbed the second spot. BitDefender officials said they found this to be a somewhat disturbing development because it indicates the large number of unpatched machines that are still in use.

The top 10 list includes:

  1. Trojan.Peed.Gen (24.7%)
  2. Exploit.Win32.WMF-PFV (21.5%)
  3. BehavesLike:Trojan.Downloader (19.06%)
  4. Win32.Netsky.P@mm (5.89%)
  5. Trojan.Pandex.H (2.54%)
  6. Win32.NetSky.D@mm (1.92%)
  7. Win32.Nyxem.E@mm (1.80%)
  8. Win32.Netsky.AA@mm (1.80%)
  9. Trojan.Kobcka.A (1.24%)
  10. Win32.Sality.M (1.24%)

BitDefender officials claim the August 2007 top 10 list of malware accounts for 81.69 percent of the total number of viruses seen in circulation.

Details on the latest malware turned loose on the world can be seen at the company's site here.

Posted by Ed Scannell on September 06, 2007


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