BitDefender Labs Top 10 Malware List for February Reveals Threats Using Packing Methods Dominate List
February 2008
Peed/Storm Trojan back in action and placing second in total detections
BUCHAREST, Romania February 28, 2008 BitDefender®, a global provider of award-winning antivirus software and data security solutions, announced today that a variety of threats, rather than a virus, topped the BitDefender Top 10 Malware List for February 2008. According to BitDefender Labs, the threats were grouped together by BitDefender virus detection engines that all used the same packing method.
"Virus writers use packers to decrease the size of the virus and to increase the cost of analysis - unpacking something packed in an as-yet unknown manner takes a lot of time and skill," explained Sorin Dudea, Head of BitDefender AV Research.
Aside from these threats, the Peed/Storm Trojan dominated the top of the list at 16.88 percent of total detections, a strong resurgence given its absence from the January Top 10 Malware List. The "popularity" of the Windows WMF vulnerability decreased as viruses using its signature only accounted for 5.33 percent of total detections.
Lower on the list are a host of much older mass mailer viruses, on their way to irrelevancy. These viruses only account for approximately six percent of total detections - more than half of which are a result of Netsky.P.
"By this point, I think it is safe to say that Netsky.P is the most widespread mass mailer virus of all time," said Dudea.
1. | Packer.Malware.NSAnti.K | 37.07% |
2. | Trojan.Peed.Gen | 16.88% |
3. | Exploit.Win32.WMF-PFV | 5.33% |
4. | BehavesLike:Trojan.Downloader | 5.21% |
5. | Win32.Netsky.P@mm | 3.36% |
6. | Win32.Parite.B | 2.93% |
7. | Win32.NetSky.D@mm | 0.92% |
8. | Win32.Netsky.AA@mm | 0.88% |
9. | Win32.Nyxem.E@mm | 0.69% |
10. | Trojan.Pandex.G | 0.65% |