05September 2007

BitDefender Lab▓s Top 10 Malware Chart for August Reveals the Infamous ▒Storm▓ Worm is Back With a Vengeance

BUCHAREST, Romania √ September 5, 2007 √ BitDefender╝, a global provider of award-winning antivirus software and data security solutions, announced today its Top 10 malware threats in August 2007. The top of the list was dominated by e-mail threats such as the ancient Netsky.P virus and the Peed trojan (aka ▒Storm▓ worm) which came in first with 24.7% of total detected threats.

The widespread use of a Windows metafile rendering exploit which surfaced at the end of 2005 and was patched against in early 2006 came in at # 2 in the top ten with 21.5% of total detections. It is disquieting because it suggests there are still a lot of unpatched machines around.

The only new entrant into the top ten is a recent and rather sophisticated rootkit which goes by the name of Trojan.Kobcka.A and is probably used to hide a mass-mailer virus.

BitDefender▓s August 2007 Top 10 malware 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%

(Note: BitDefender▓s August 2007 Top 10 list of malware accounts for 81.69% of the total number of all viruses seen in circulation.)

"The fact that Trojan.Kobcka racked up 1.24% of the total malware detections and made it into our top ten 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.

For further details on the latest malware detected in the wild, please visit BitDefender▓s Defense Portal site at: http://www.bitdefender.com/site/VirusInfo/realTimeReporting/.