Trojans and adware the worst threats in August

According to data from the Panda ActiveScan online antivirus solution, Trojans and adware were the most active threats in August. Specifically, they were responsible for 25.92% and 24.81% respectively of all infections detected. This once again underlines the strategy of cyber-criminals to use this type of malicious code for financial gain.
Worms, responsible for over eight percent of infections, were the third most active type of malware. The other types of malicious code to attack users' systems were backdoors (3.59%) dialers (3.03%), spyware (2.96%) and bots (2.51%).

“The figures in August are similar to those observed in July, suggesting that the prime financial motive of malware creators is unchanged”, explains Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs, who adds: “The versatility of Trojans makes them ideal for this purpose. It’s therefore no surprise that these threats head the ranking of the most active threats”.

With respect to the specific strains of malware that were most active last month, in first place comes Downloader.MDW. This malicious code downloads other malware onto compromised computers. Second and third places in the list are occupied by two new malicious codes: the ZLFake.A.drp Trojan and the virus ZlFake.A.


Name Previous position

Trj/Downloader.MDW ; 1=
W32/ZLFake.A.drp ; New
W32/ZlFake.A ; New
Trj/Lineage.BZE ; 3 Down
W32/Brontok.H.worm ; 2 Down
Application/SuperFast ; 10 Up
W32/Sdbot.ftp.worm ; 5 Down
W32/Puce.E.worm ; 9 Up
Trj/Dropper.UN ; 7 Down
Trj/Perlovga.A ; 8 Down



In fourth place, down one spot from last month, is Lineage.BZE, a Trojan designed to steal passwords. Similarly, Brontok.H, in fifth place, has dropped down the ranking since the previous month.

On the other hand, the SuperFast PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) has moved up four places from tenth to sixth.

Sdbot.ftp, the script used by Sdbot worms to infect computers, has dropped down to seventh place. The Puce.E worm is another malicious code that became more active in August, and is now in eighth place.

Finally, two Trojans, Dropper.UN and Perlovga.A came ninth and tenth in the list.