Exploits overtake Trojans as major e-threats

Gordon Peters
Monday, 01 March 2010 13:47

IT Industry - Market

Exploits through removable devices have overtaken Trojans as the most prevalent methods of infections to watch out for in the latest security report from BitDefender, and the Trojan.clicker.CM has dropped away in the past month as the number one global e-threat.

In its latest report, BitDefender says that with two Trojans, two Exploits and one Worm making up February's top five e-threats, exploits through removable devices and operating system vulnerabilities have retaken the top positions in the e-threat charts.

February finished up with a surprise, with last month's number one e-threat (Trojan.Clicker.CM) disappearing from the top ten. Instead, Trojan.AutorunInf.Gen - the generic mechanism that spreads malware using removable devices such as USB keys, memory cards or external hard-disks - was the top e-threat of the month accounting for 9.09 percent of global malware infections.

Senior research at BitDefender, Catalin Cosoi, advises that 'external devices should be scanned on a regular basis,' and says that this is a 'safe practice especially when these devices have been plugged into computers at work, internet cafes or other public locations.'

In its overview of the five most prevalent threats in February, BitDefender reports:

'¢    Win32.Worm.Downadup.Gen is up one place since January. Ranked second with 6.24 percent, this worm exploits a well-known Microsoft Windows vulnerability. 'Win32.Worm.Downadup.Gen's continued presence in our monthly top 10's suggests computer users' reluctance to update their operating system and their antimalware solution.

'More alarmingly, security fixes issued by Microsoft a year ago rectifies this vulnerability, but it is evident from the amount of infections each month that people are ignoring this too,' Cosoi says.

'¢    BitDefender's third and fourth e-threats for February are Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen with 5.13 percent and Exploit.PDF-Payload.Gen with 4.21 percent of the total amount of infections. These generic detections deal with manipulated PDF files exploiting different vulnerabilities found in Adobe Acrobat Reader's Javascript engine. Their purpose is to execute malicious code on users' computers.

'¢    Torrents continue to be one of the favorite vectors of malware distribution. Trojan.Wimad.Gen.1 is February's number five e-threat with an infection percentage of 3.37.

And, according to Coisoi, a yet-to-be-aired episode of your favorite series or a box-office movie 'could be your ticket for infection by this Trojan.'