Japanese Earthquake Paves Way for Several Kinds of Cyber Attacks

Recently, GFI Software, a top IT solutions firm for SMEs, released its monthly report for the month of March 2011. The report included the list of top 10 most widespread malware threats during March 2011. The report stated that, the Japanese earthquake, which occurred on March 11, 2011, resulted in several kinds of cyber attacks during the month of March.

Commenting on the matter, Christopher Boyd, Senior Threat Researcher at GFI Software, stated that, during March 2011, they witnessed an apparently continual collection of scams associated with the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, including bogus charity and donation websites, clickjacking on Facebook, and 419 spam e-mails. He further added that, they also noticed infecting or poisoning of search engine concerning radiation levels that directed users to malware infected websites, as reported by Source Wire on April 7, 2011.

March 2011 also witnessed several other different kinds of attack, including several rogue Facebook applications, ransomware (which locks users out of their computers until they call a long distance toll line for an unlock code), and the standard accumulation of bogus antivirus programs and system defragmenters.

Further, GFI stated that scammers are also planning in advance for SEO poisoning associated with the printable Easter cards as Easter is approaching.

Besides the abovementioned scams, PC Trojans once again accounted for seven of the top 10 malware risks for March 2011 with Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT Trojan (20.61%), leading the list. Its symptoms are bogus system scans and outcomes and a decrease in the speed of system. It has above 850 malicious variations.

Fraudtool.Win32.Securityshield.ek!e (v) Trojan (4.09%) stood at No. 2 and Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra Trojan (3.68%) was on the third rank.

Subsequent to the above two Trojans is Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen (3.11%), which stood at No. 4 on GFI's list. Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen is a dangerous PC infection with enough malicious prospective to challenge victim's private information and secrecy and, thus, his privacy. It is quite proficient at utilizing rootkit techniques applicable to infiltrate one's PC cautiously.

Zugo ltd (v) is a less dangerous malware, which ranked five and accounted for 2.74% of the total malware identified by GFI during March 2011.

Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 Trojan (1.78%), Worm.Win32.Downad.Gen (v) Worm (1.54%), INF.Autorun (v) Trojan (1.51%), Fraudtool.Win32.Securityshield.ek!c (v) Trojan (1.48%) and Pinball Corporation (v) Adware (1.33%) are some other web threats that stood at sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth positions respectively, on GFI's monthly list.

Related article: Japanese Text Editor Reports Flaw

» SPAMfighter News - 4/19/2011