ESET Discusses Malware Writers’ Trend

Malware writers continue to commit fraud, information theft and construction of botnets as their prime activities, as per reports of ESET's ThreatSence.Net on the basis of its latest data on attacks of user systems across the globe.

ESET provides security software for businesses and consumers everywhere. It was established in 1992. ESET has its headquarters in Bratislava, SK and has representative offices in more than 100 countries. ESET won international award for developing anti-threat software NOD32. The software is a real-time protection from recognized and unrecognized spyware, viruses and other malware.

One such malware that NOD32 protects is Swizzor, which has been created by applying an autogeneration routine. This means it would be different every time it is downloaded, according to Paul Brook, managing director of ESET U.K. As a result of this, the Trojan churns several thousands of its variant every day. Hence to protect users against this Trojan, a proactive detection is most essential.

December 2006 saw seven trojans out of the top ten threats that were particularly designed to obtain unauthorized entry to infected machines to satisfy criminal operations. This is a clear demonstration of their demand among current malware writers.

Although trojans cannot make their copies and infect files on their own, quite unlike viruses or worms, yet they are the most widespread and treacherous. This is due to attackers' ability to develop increasingly sophisticated Trojan that steal data and are also difficult items for detection by anti-virus solutions.

When a miscreant executes the Trojan, it loads several spyware tracking software on the system. The Win32/TrojanDownloader.Swizzor was the most identified threat during the first half of 2006 following a decline in other months and then climbing to the third position in the top ten threats for December. This Trojan surreptitiously installs itself from certain websites or delivers through spam mails.

Win32/TrojanClicker.Small.KJ is another Trojan in the top ten. It attempts to download and execute malicious programs from the Internet, enabling a hacker to sneak into infected systems. Some other trojans in the list are Win32/PSW.Linegae.DN and JS/TrojanDownloader.Agent.BI, which steal sensitive data and develop botnets from infected computers respectively.

Related article: ESET Says Online Games Password Stealers were Top Malware in 2008

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