Malware distribution tendencies 2011
By Gina on September 30, 2011 | Vulnerabilities, Malware, Windows infections, malicious websites, infected links, rogue attachments, hackers, fictitious downloads, vulnerabilities, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, Flaws in Internet Explorer, CSIS research, Peter Kruse
The main reason why Windows gets infected is the failure to fix third-party programs. About three to five years ago the basic traffic of malware to come was through the emails with infected links or rogue attachments. These days, hackers use malicious websites with fictitious downloads more than ever.
According to Danish security firm CSIS, about 85 per cent of all computer infections come through the attacks that happen via commercial exploit kits. This was monitored by the e-crime research security consultancy which concluded that 31.3 per cent of 500,000 users who were exposed to exploit toolkits were tricked into downloading malware to their system without having updates of the security software .
The most attacked systems were those that run vulnerable versions of Java JRE, Adobe Reader and Acrobat, and Adobe Flash. Flaws in Internet Explorer were only 10 per cent of all attacks. Infected systems are loaded with various malware, including rogue anti-spyware programs and information-stealing spyware.
CSIS pointed out: „99.8 per cent of all virus/malware infections caused by commercial exploit kits are a direct result of the lack of updating five specific software packages“. CSIS research Peter Kruse commented: „Anti-virus is still needed however the ways to circumvent AV detection are many and works at different levels eg, the exploit kit authors sometime provide SLA (Service Level Agreement) and guarantees that the code is not picked up by AV. This is usually done by slightly changing the code and obfuscating it. The payload is often tricked past AV using complex packers.“
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