We have on-going Web E-Threats into September

The top ten e-threats reported by BitDefender® in September 2008 are all web-based. The list contains three versions of the Wimad trojan downloader, a fake codec downloader usually found on malicious websites. Wimad is spread with the aid of a network of malicious websites, the extent of which make it the most common threat on the Internet these days. The four variants that made into the BitDefender top ten e-threats account together for almost 18 percent of the total number of infected files blocked by BitDefender

The very common adware Trojan.Clicker.CM can be found in second place this month. It is used to display popups containing advertisements when accessing infected internet sites. To successfully display the pop-ups containing advertisements, the trojan has functions to bypass the Norton Internet Security Pop-up Blocker.

Variants of the FakeAlert trojan hold mid table positions. This application is a rogue antivirus that shows a fake system scan and misleading results (a very infected computer) in order to con the user into registration and purchase. The trojans are distributed via filesharing websites and networks, as well as through a network of "dedicated" websites.

Tail end with just 1.4 percent of the total detections this month, is the Trojan.HTML.Zlob.AE. This acts as the gateway to a malware application – however the malware-serving webpage itself has already been identified by BitDefender as malicious and blocked. Possibly due to this countermeasure, the actual Zlob trojan did not find its way into the September top ten.

"Overall it has been a strangely quiet summer", says Sorin Dudea, BitDefender’s Head of Antivirus Lab. “While the deluge of new e-threats and e-threat variants continues unabated, the most common of them are here to stay, so the threat landscape is relatively static from month to month.

It seems web-based e-threats are now the new mass mailers, in terms of prevalence and infection strategies used," he concludes.