Dangerous dialler heads Net nasties top ten

By Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 05 June 2007 10:38

Business IT - Security

An unusual piece of malware - a dialler that automatically dials premium rate international numbers via a PC's analogue modem - has topped Fortinet's latest ranking of the most frequently seen IT security threats.

According to Fortinet, "Malware such as this, which involves a bot embedding a dialler, is particularly rare and in this domain, the volume of [the bot, dubbed] W32/Dialer.PZ!tr is unprecedented."

Fortinet says that the bot was primarily reported throughout Mexico and the United States, with Europe and Africa being the destination locations for the calls. It suggested that Mexico was targeted because it has high use of dial-up modems, and the United States because of its high population.

Other notable malware that occurred in May included a resurgence of the well-known mass mailer Sober in the form of mailto:W32/Sober.AA@m which saw the highest amount of activity since January 2006.

The report is compiled from all of Fortinet's FortiGate multi-threat security systems in use worldwide. The full report is available here.