The Deadly Duo: Spam and Viruses, February 2007
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Advertising is found to be the leading category for URLs containing malicious code, 80 percent of which are hosted in the U.S., according to the "Web Security Trends Report: Q1 2007" released by Finjan.
"As commercial interests continue to drive e-crime, malicious code is more likely to be hosted on local servers in the U.S. and U.K. than in countries with less-developed e-crime law enforcement policies," the report says.
The "Internet Security Threat Report," released by Symantec, notes a shift in Internet attack activity from status-oriented attacks to attacks motivated by criminal activity. URLs are a target; attackers are discovering and exploiting medium-severity vulnerabilities in third-party applications such as Web applications and Web browsers.
A report released by Microsoft identified Web spam continues to be a major disseminator of unwanted messages and malware. The report states an increase of phishing, spam, bot networks, Trojans, and zero-day threats across the Web.
Threats may be appearing on the Web, but spam has gone up 222 percent since November 2005; 125 percent of the increase occurred within the last six months. E-mail-borne attacks in January and February focused mainly on propagating botnets (define) to fuel future attacks.
Data volumes in February grew to more than 17 terabytes within a 24-hour period, and average spasm blocked per day rose to more than 1 billion.
| Top Web Filtering Blocks by Category, February 2007 | |
|---|---|
| Category | Blocked (%) |
| Advertising and promotion | 15.79 |
| Chat and instant messaging | 13.72 |
| Webmail | 11.18 |
| Hosting and IT services | 8.46 |
| Software and hardware | 6.22 |
| Search and portals | 3.86 |
| Music | 3.77 |
| Films and TV | 3.46 |
| Pornography | 3.29 |
| Gambling | 3.17 |
| Source: Postini, 2007 | |
In its first malware miscellany report, Kaspersky Lab issued awards for the greediest and most pernicious Trojans and programs. Trojan-Spy.Win32.Banker.zd was judged the greediest Trojan targeting banks; Trojan-Spy.Win32.Banker.z was found to be the greediest Trojan targeting e-payment systems; and Backdoor.Win32.Neodurk.13 was the greediest program targeting plastic cards.
| Top 20 Viruses, February 2007 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Position | Name | Percentage |
| 1 | Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.t | 15.82 |
| 2 | Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.gt | 11.85 |
| 3 | Email-Worm.Win32.Zhelatin.dam | 8.19 |
| 4 | Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.g | 7.92 |
| 5 | Wmail-Worm.Win32.Zhelatin.o | 6.83 |
| 6 | Email-Worm.Win32.Warezov.ls | 5.03 |
| 7 | Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.c | 3.72 |
| 8 | Email-Worm.Win32.Zhelatin.u | 3.58 |
| 9 | Email-Worm.Win32.Zhelatin.m | 3.30 |
| 10 | Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.aa | 3.27 |
| 11 | Email-Worm.Win32.Zhelatin.r | 2.87 |
| 12 | Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Tibs.jr | 2.43 |
| 13 | Email-Worm.Win32.Zhelatin.t | 1.94 |
| 14 | Email-Worm.Win32.Scano.gen | 1.83 |
| 15 | Email-Worm.Win32.Nyxem.e | 1.66 |
| 16 | Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.b | 1.59 |
| 17 | Packed.Win32.PePatch.gr | 1.52 |
| 18 | Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.t | 1.39 |
| 19 | Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.gen | 1.26 |
| 20 | Exploit.Win32.IMG-WMF.y | 1.14 |
| | Other malicious programs | 12.86 |
| Source: Kaspersky Lab, 2007 | ||
