Cyber Security Institute

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

USB Worm No. 1 Malware: McAfee Report

USB worms have taken the No. 1 spot for top malware in the world, according to a McAfee threat report, released Tuesday.  In addition, the “McAfee Threats Report, First Quarter 2010” indicated a trend of diploma spam coming from China and other Asian countries, while spammers are continuing to exploit high-profile news events, such as the Haiti earthquake, by poisoning search engines.  Finally, the report found that U.S.-based servers continue to host the majority of malicious URLs.

Threats on portable storage devices rose to the top of the list as the most popular malware, evident by a rash of AutoRun infections that held the No. 1 and No. 3 spots for top five malware over the last quarter.  Security experts contend that attacks delivered via portable storage devices have experienced a revival in recent months, after being dormant for an extensive period of time.  “It’s kind of like your old-school style of malware, one device to another device” said Dave Marcus, security research and communications manager for McAfee Labs.

All of the top five threats remained consistently popular worldwide.

Marcus said that social-engineering attacks, particularly those targeting social networks, are continuing on a rapid upward trend.  “A lot of people don’t realize the bad guys read the same news the good guys do,” Marcus said.

And despite reports of copious malware sourced internationally, the report also showed that the U.S hosted the vast majority of new malicious URLs, totaling 98 percent.

http://www.crn.com/security/224900212