BitDefender Lab’s Top 10 Malware List for March Reveals the Storm Worm is Back in Action

The Storm Work dominates as BehavesLike:Trojan.ShellHook becomes the most widespread malware technique

BitDefender®, a global provider of award-winning antivirus software and data security solutions, announced today that a massive resurgence of Peed (aka Storm Worm) trojan has dominated BitDefender’s March 2008 Top Ten Malware list. According to BitDefender Labs, variants of this trojan account for more than half of the total malware detected last month.

Although the Storm Worm topped the list, the most widespread malware technique, ranked number 3, was detected by BitDefender as BehavesLike:Trojan.ShellHook, a technique which causes a malicious program to launch, when the user initially started a legitimate program.

"This is a convenient way to run a piece of malware, enabling user privileges but without user interaction," explained Sorin Dudea, Head of BitDefender AV Research. "It's not very stealthy, but it is a common characteristic shared by various types of malware these days. However, it is one that has few, if any, legitimate uses."

The rest of the top is taken up mostly with ancient but resilient mass mailers:

BitDefender’s March 2008 Top 10 malware list includes:

1.	Trojan.Peed.Gen	55.58
2.	Win32.Netsky.P@mm	5.97
3.	BehavesLike:Trojan.ShellHook	2.07%
4.	Win32.NetSky.D@mm	1.76%
5.	Win32.Netsky.AA@mm	1.54%
6.	Win32.Nyxem.E@mm	1.22
7.	Win32.Netsky.B@mm	1.07
8.	Win32.Netsky.C@mm	1.03
9.	Trojan.Kobcka.CZ.	0.83
10.	Win32.Mydoom.M@mm	0.72%

OTHERS 28.21%



For further details on the latest malware detected in the wild, please visit BitDefender’s Defense Portal site.