Trojans were again the most damaging threats, there was a dramatic increase of infections caused by worms that target the theft of information.
This figure falls within the new malware dynamic, in which criminals create threats designed to carry out online fraud, identity theft crimes, etc. The new year begins with a disturbing fact: the use of Trojans to steal confidential user data bind strongly worms. Thus, according to data from the Panda ActiveS can solution, while the Trojans led the 24.41% of registered infections, the worms reached the not inconsiderable figure of 15.01%. This contrasts with findings in 2007, given that the percentages of those attacks caused by malicious code never reached 10%.
The explanation for this increase is in the great activity of Nuwar type worms (also known as Storm Worm), according to PandaLabs, the laboratory for detecting and analyzing malware from Panda Security, have experienced a great activity. Worms have the ability to spread themselves very quickly. However, and unlike years ago epidemics caused huge media interest, not intended to collapse the data traffic or cause damage to computers, but its ultimate goal is to steal confidential data for online fraud or identity theft crimes.
To do so, these worms usually arrive in messages that use social engineering, referring to topics of interest or currency. They also include links that either lead to pages that have been modified to automatically install other malware that are carried out by data theft itself, or in other cases, false pages similar to those used in attacks phishing.
“Although we sensed this situation, we did not expect that criminals should focus so early in these worms. In fact, this is a very dangerous threat, because, although its effects are more visible than the Trojans and, therefore, can be neutralized more easily, these worms can carry out attacks “lightning” indiscriminate, which can obtain a large number of confidential data very quickly, “said Luis Corrons, technical director of Panda Labs:” Furthermore, to increase effectiveness, what criminals are doing is to circulate many copies of these worms in very little time, so that the probability of being infected by any of them are very high. ” Other types of malware that caused damage last January were, among others, adware (21.21%), backdoors (4.03%), spyware (3.13%) and bots (2.65%).
The most active malicious code
As the most active malware samples during the month of January, the ranking is led by Downloader.MDW Trojan designed to download other malware on the system. Second and third set and Perlovga.A Bagle.HX worms.