01November 2007

BitDefender Lab▓s Top 10 Malware Chart for October Reveals a Flatter Curve

BUCHAREST, Romania √ October 31, 2007 √ BitDefender╝, a global provider of award-winning antivirus software and data security solutions, announced today its Top 10 malware threats in October 2007. According to BitDefender Labs, this month's top ten threats make up 65.56 percent of all malware detected. The flatter malware curve seen in recent months continued in October, with the first three spots on the monthly top ten threats list occupied by generic signatures, detection rules which stand in for all the malware using a particular infection or obfuscation technique, and not a single piece of malware.

The first spot on October▓s list continued to be occupied by trojan downloaders such as the Peed Trojan, aka the Storm worm. The old exploit Exploit.Win32.WMF-PFV takes the second spot on the list due to the fact that it found its way into the code of many different worms as another means of attempting infections.

Packer.Malware.NSAnti.J comes in third on the list. Packer.Malware.NSAnti.J are actually programs that had been packed/protected with a protection system called NSAnti, used by malware authors to bypass anti-virus protection and to hide malware contents. The packer itself is polymorphic and has the ability to detect if it's running in a virtualized environment and attempts to crash it upon detection. This makes automated detection of new versions more difficult.

The middle of October▓s malware list is occupied by old and very old mass mailer viruses, proving once again that, with the wonders of backups and highly reliable computers, viruses never truly die.

BitDefender▓s October 2007 Top 10 malware list includes:
1. BehavesLike:Trojan.Downloader 20.36%
2. Exploit.Win32.WMF-PFV 17.51%
3. Packer.Malware.NSAnti.J 10.49%
4. Win32.Netsky.P@mm 6.56%
5. Win32.NetSky.D@mm 2.06%
6. Win32.Netsky.AA@mm 2.00%
7. Win32.Nyxem.E@mm 1.90%
8. Trojan.VBS.Autorun.J 1.79%
9. Win32.Sality.M 1.46%
10. Trojan.Agent.AFIS 1.43%

"All in all, it's been a rather eventful month" declared Viorel Canja for BitDefender. "We're seeing lots and lots of new viruses and a general tendency towards ever-stealthier malware which gets updated at a fantastic clip. Once again, B-HAVE and other automated detection techniques have proved crucial in keeping our customers safe".

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/.