Cyber-criminals are no longer interested in causing widely reported epidemics, but rather stealing confidential data that can be used for online fraud or identity theft. The consequences of the new malware dynamic include:
- More new malware specimens appear every day. In 2006, PandaLabs detected as many new samples as in the previous 15 years combined. At present, antivirus laboratories cannot process all the new threats that appear day after day. This results in many computers being infected without users knowledge, even though they might have an updated antivirus installed.
- Cyber-crooks try to infect computers silently, so that neither users nor security companies can detect when new samples are put in circulation. For example, just a few days ago, PandaLabs detected a network of zombie computers made up of 160,000 PCs infected with the Barracuda.A bot, unknown until then.
- The types of malicious code traditionally responsible for large epidemics, like viruses or worms, are being replaced with other criminally-oriented malware such as Trojans, bots or spyware. Some 66 percent of new Trojans that appeared in the first quarter of 2007 were Trojans designed to be used for theft.
- Increased number of malware using “stealth techniques”, like rootkits, packers, etc. Malware specimens that use these techniques are more difficult to detect, and stay longer on computers performing malicious actions.
Indeed, they are four good reasons to use NanoScan...