Fortinet Reports Over Half of Malware in August were Scareware

Security Company Fortinet lately published its new 'August 2011 Threat Landscape Report' according to which, a scareware downloader named W32/FraudLoad.OR constituted 58% of all fresh malicious software detected during August 2011.

Remarking about this malware, Senior Security Strategist Derek Manky at Fortinet stated that conventionally FraudLoad downloaded bogus AV programs onto an unwary end-user's computer, however, at the Fortinet laboratory, researchers discovered that it wasn't uncommon to have botnet downloaders such as FraudLoad for pulling down extra malicious programs like spam bots. Marketwatch.com published this on September 9, 2011.

Furthermore, Fortinet reports that following Trojan FraudLoad, one freshly identified variant of the ZeuS bot namely W32/Zbot.47CE!tr ranks No.2 on its list of most prevalent malicious programs of August 2011.

Manky said that the increased operations of ZeuS didn't astonish his company's researchers since the botnet was extremely popular as also hackers cracking the source code of ZeuS subsequently published the same online in May 2011.

Additionally giving more remarks on this fascinating discovery, Manky said that his company trusted it would keep on witnessing ZeuS as well as SpyEye -one more well-known botnet that hackers attacked and cracked the source code of followed with leaking out the same to the public - for disseminating through surges during the months ahead. Infosecurity-magazine.com published this on September 12, 2011.

Moreover, going deeper inside the monthly e-threats research paper discloses that a known botnet downloader W32/Yakes along with its 4 variants were seen disseminating via junk e-mails utilizing templates of conventional prominent credit card makers.

Displaying the typical caption "Credit card is blocked," the spam mail's text elaborated that because illegitimate transactions were noticed on the payment card of the recipient, the card had been blocked.

Thereafter, according to Fortinet, the e-mail suggested the recipient for reading the details in a given attached file. But as the attachment was opened, the Yakes malware got loaded onto the user's PC, the security company explains.

Further, alongside the above malicious programs, Fortinet reveals the other malware programs in its new report which are W32/Agent.TAB!tr with 13.98% of detections and W32/Yakes.ECEB!tr with 9.14%, and ranked No.4 and 5 respectively.

Related article: Fortinet Pinpoints Ten Biggest Threats

» SPAMfighter News - 9/21/2011