Rogue antivirus (AV) attacks are showing no signs of slowing anytime soon. According to recent statistics coming from GFI Software, April saw a continued increase in the volume of detected malware, with 73,000 new variants of threats being released daily — a 26 percent increase over the same period last year.
April proved to be an opportunistic month for cybercriminals with several high profile events setting up the opportunity for rogue antivirus (AV) attacks exploiting events, including the Royal Wedding, the Easter holiday, the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space, along with the release of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate.
Popular methods used to attack end-user endpoints and gain access to computers include SEO poisoning attacks which hijack legitimate search results, such as searches for Royal Wedding coverage, as well as rogue AV applications and malicious websites that prompt users to install fake software on their PCs to view supposedly exclusive content.
Consistent with the month of March, ThreatNet statistics revealed that seven of the top 10 malware threats in April were Trojans. Trojans detected as Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT (a generic detection that encompasses a broad array of Trojans) continue to be the number one threat, accounting for 20.73 percent of total malware detected this month.
Top 10 Malware Detections for April from GFI Software
Detection | Type | Percent
Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT Trojan 20.73%
Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen Trojan 2.7%
Zugo LTD (v) Adware 2.54%
Trojan.JS.Redirector.cd (v) Trojan 2.27%
Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra Trojan 2.06%
Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 Trojan 1.79%
Trojan.Win32.FakeAv.awrp (v) Trojan 1.28%
INF.Autorun (v) Trojan 1.27%
Worm.Win32.Downad.Gen (v) Worm 1.24%
Pinball Corporation (v) Adware 1.23%
GFI’s top 10 malware list is compiled from collected scan data of tens of thousands of GFI VIPRE Antivirus customers who are part of GFI’s ThreatNet™ automated threat tracking system.
GFI also warned users to be mindful of Internet searches for several high profile events during the month of May as well. These may include malware attacks surrounding the Indianapolis 500, Towel Day (celebrating the late author Douglas Adams) and college graduation season. Any of these events could be prime targets for SEO poisoning or phishing attacks, and users should also be wary of unsolicited emails or web offers.