Sunbelt Software has released its monthly data dump that charts the most commonly observed malware and spyware threats, and, as has been the case for a good while, Trojan attacks continued to lead the way across the Top Ten rankings during Dec. 2008.
From the Virtumonde Trojan, which accounted for almost 5 percent of the samples processed by Sunbelt, thus ranking as the most widespread attack noted by the security vendor during the month, down to the Trojan.DNSChanger.Gen attack at number ten, accounting for less than 1 percent of all samples, the only non-Trojan making the list for Dec. was the Rootkit,TDss.Gen threat (at number four with 1.8 percent).
The top ten most prevalent threats for the month of December reported by Sunbelt were:
-Virtumonde
-Trojan-Downloader.Zlob.Media-Codec
-Explorer32.Hijacker
-Rootkit.TDss.Gen
-Trojan-Downloader.Generic
-Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen
-Trojan.FakeAlert
-Trojan.Win32.Monder.gen
-INF.Autorun (v)
-Trojan.DNSChanger.Gen
So what should we take from this?
Companies should be spending lots of time and effort studying their outbound traffic logs to ensure that Trojans aren’t shouting out from inside their networks to download additional malware files.
But, really, they should already be doing so anyways.
Matt Hines has been following the IT industry for over a decade as a reporter and blogger, and has been specifically focused on the security space since 2003, including a previous stint writing for eWeek and contributing to the Security Watch blog. Hines is currently employed as marketing communications manager at Core Security Technologies, a Boston-based maker of security testing software. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of Core Security, and neither the company, nor its products and services will be actively discussed in the blog. Please send news, research or tips to SecurityWatchBlog@gmail.com.