Fortinet® — the pioneer and leading
provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions — today announced
the top 10 most reported high-risk threats for May 2008. The strongest
development of the month showed adware Vapsup flooding users with
advertisements for rogue virus protection software. Vapsup jumped 42
positions to land on the second spot, just .01 percent behind persistent
malware leader, Netsky. From using plug-ins that hi-jack control of users’
Web browser navigation to rogue antivirus scanner pop-ups, Vapsup had a
bagful of tricks and scare tactics to lure the unsuspecting user into
clicking affiliate links. The incentive for all this trickery was the
per-click payouts through affiliate marketing programs linking back to
servers located mostly in Russia and the U.S.
“Judging by the high level of activity by Vapsup in the past month, the
cyber criminals behind this adware should be getting a huge payday,” said
Derek Manky, security researcher for Fortinet.
Fortinet’s FortiGuard(TM) Global Security Research Team compiled this
report based on intelligence gathered from FortiGate(TM) multi-threat
security systems in production worldwide. Customers who use Fortinet’s
FortiGuard Subscription Services are already protected against the threats
outlined in this report.
Additional malware trends observed during this period include the
following:
-- Online gaming Trojan activity continues in Asia, still concentrated in
Taiwan and China;
-- An Iframe injection campaign runs strong through Iframe.DN, pointing
to Korean servers;
-- Parasitic file infector, Virut.A, which made itself known in March
remains in the top five for three consecutive months, showing longevity.
Following are the Top Ten individual threats and Top Five threat families
in May. Top 100 shifts indicate positional changes compared to April’s Top
100 ranking, with “new” representing the malware’s debut in the Top 100.
Top Ten Individual Threats
% of Top 100
Rank Threat Name Threat Type Detections Shift
1 W32/Netsky!similar Mass mailer 8.18 -
2 Adware/Vapsup Adware 8.17 +42
3 HTML/Iframe_CID!exploit Exploit 6.25 -
4 W32/Virut.A Virus 5.05 +1
5 W32/Pushdo.EV@mm Trojan 3.49 new
6 W32/OnLineGamesEncPK.fam!tr.pws Trojan 2.35 -
7 HTML/Iframe.DN!tr.dldr Trojan 1.99 +7
8 W32/MyTob.BH.fam@mm Mass mailer 1.99 -
9 W32/OnLineGames.ADRE!tr.pws Trojan 1.72 new
10 W32/Zafi.E@mm Mass mailer 1.65 +8
Top Five Families
Rank Malware Family Percentage Top 10 Shift
1 Netsky 14.0 -
2 MyTob 8.0 -
3 Virut 5.5 +1
4 Pushdo 3.7 +1
5 MyDoom 2.5 +1
To read the full May report, please visit:
http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/reports/roundup_may_2008.html . For ongoing
threat research, bookmark the FortiGuard Center
( http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/ ) or add it to your RSS feed by going to
http://www.fortinet.com/FortiGuardCenter/rss/index.html . To learn more
about FortiGuard Subscription Services, visit
http://www.fortinet.com/products/fortiguard.html .
FortiGuard Subscription Services offer broad security solutions including
antivirus, intrusion prevention, Web content filtering and anti-spam
capabilities. These services enable protection against threats on both
application and network layers. FortiGuard Services are continuously
updated by the FortiGuard Global Security Research Team, which enables
Fortinet to deliver a combination of multi-layered security intelligence
and true zero-day protection from new and emerging threats. These updates
are delivered to all FortiGate, FortiMail and FortiClient products.
About Fortinet ( www.fortinet.com )
Fortinet is the pioneer and leading provider of ASIC-accelerated unified
threat management, or UTM, security systems, which are used by enterprises
and service providers to increase their security while reducing total
operating costs. Fortinet solutions were built from the ground up to
integrate multiple levels of security protection — including firewall,
antivirus, intrusion prevention, VPN, spyware prevention and anti-spam –
designed to help customers protect against network and content level
threats. Leveraging a custom ASIC and unified interface, Fortinet solutions
offer advanced security functionality that scales from remote office to
chassis-based solutions with integrated management and reporting. Fortinet
solutions have won multiple awards around the world and are the only
security products that are certified in seven programs by ICSA Labs:
(Firewall, Antivirus, IPSec, SSL, Network IPS, and Anti-Spyware). Fortinet
is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.
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