CLEARWATER, FL – GFI Software, an IT solutions provider for small and medium-sized enterprises, says continuing high levels of rogue security products circulated during January.
It also says it sees a surge in malware that takes aim at vulnerabilities within Adobe Reader and the .pdf file format – two of the top 10 detections are aimed at exploiting holes within Adobe. The top 10 data is compiled from monthly scans performed by GFI’s award-winning anti-malware solution, VIPRE Antivirus, and its antispyware tool, CounterSpy, as a service of GFI Labs.
We find that staying aware of what cyber crooks and malware purveyors are doing is a good way to make sure we maintain vigilance, change our passwords to better ones, avoid using the same one for multiple services, and run quality security software.
As was the case in December 2010, seven of the top 10 malware detections were Trojans, with those seven accounting for almost 34% of all malware detections for the month. ThreatNet also revealed an increase in the FakeVimes rogues that were reported last month, when FraudTool.Win32.FakeVimes!delf (v) hit the number nine spot with .73 percent of all detections.
Twitter users fell victim to a fake antivirus software scam in January as a number of accounts began distributing links promoting rogue security software. The attack used Google’s Web address shortening service to conceal the links’ destination.
Twitter worked to reset passwords, but there is no telling how many users were led to malicious sites due to this phishing attack. GFI Software provided instructions on how to remove the Security Shield fake antivirus program in one of its support forums.
“Another indicator of increased rogue activity is the fact that we discovered, and blogged about, 22 new rogues on the GFI Rogue Blog in January. That’s a lot for one month, considering we’ve seen an average of between 13 and 14 new iterations per month for the last three years,” said Tom Kelchner, communications and research analyst for GFI Software.
ThreatNet is GFI Lab’s monitoring system that retrieves real-time data from VIPRE installations. Statistics come from tens of thousands of machines running VIPRE.
| Top 10 detections for December | ||||
| Detection | Type | Percent | ||
| Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT | Trojan | 21.38 | ||
| Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra | Trojan | 3.71 | ||
| Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen | Trojan | 3.69 | ||
| INF.Autorun (v) | Trojan | 1.68 | ||
| Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 | Trojan | 1.59 | ||
| Worm.Win32.Downad.Gen (v) | Worm.W32 | 1.47 | ||
| FraudTool.Win32.FakeAV.hdd (v) | Trojan | 1.06 | ||
| Exploit.AbobeReader.Gen (v) | PDF Exploit | 1.06 | ||
| Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v) | PDF Exploit | 0.80 | ||
| Trojan.ASF.Wimad | Trojan | 0.73 | ||
A graphical comparison of the top 10 most prevalent malware infections between December 2010 and January 2011.
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Tags: Adobe Reader, GFI, Pdf, Security, trojans, Twitter phishing attack, Two top malware attacks exploiting holes in Adobe
