Thanks a million, malware writers - 25 times over

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 11 June 2009 10:07

Business IT - Security

Kaspersky Lab claims it has detected its 25 millionth piece of malware.

25 million pieces of malware is a lot of programming effort, even when you include every minor variant.

According to Kaspersky Lab, the Koobface variant it detected on June 9 became the 25 millionth entry in its malware database.

Messages purportedly from a friend recommending a video clip lead to a page which prompts the user to download and install a bogus Flash Player update that in reality installs the Koobface worm.

There are well over 50 variants of Koobface.

In related news, Symantec's latest State of Phishing Report notes "a new trend of phishing attacks against the popular social-networking site Facebook."

The sites used for the attacks were mostly based in Latvia or China, but frequently used .im (Isle of Man), .at (Austria) or .be (Belgium) domain names.

The initial attacks were thought to be carried out using forged spam email, but once the perpetrators had snagged an initial batch of Facebook usernames and passwords further attacks were apparently made through Facebook itself.