Fortinet reports top threats to PC health

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By Tamlin Magee: Monday 01 August 2005, 10:36

VIRUS PROTECTION COMPANY Fortinet, makers of the Fortiguard and Fortigate protection products, has released its malware report for July showing interesting malicious code activity.
Of all the viruses detected by Fortinet in July 05, W32/Netsky is right at the top, accounting for a staggering 17% of all reported viruses. Number two on the virus detection list is Possible_MyTob.G, making up 7% of the total. According to the report, MyTob variants are remaining a constant infection threat, although Fortinet says that "the spreading of MyTob appears to be reduced to minimal first-time appearances," supposedly a result of "improved heuristics with MyTob variant detections" and network admins blocking potentially dangerous extensions like .exe, .scr and .pif.

Also on the rise is the Ebay phishing mimic (ranking 14 on the July list), which as most will probably know tries to convince e-mail recipients into signing into a fake Ebay web page using login information. Head on over to Fortinet for more on this particular scam.

Fortinet's top 20 spyware detection has the BetterInternet adware placed at number one, making up about 40% of all Spyware infections, closely followed by the 180Solutions adware, taking up 36% of all infections. Old pals Gator and CyDoor are way low, making up for 0.12% and 0.11% respectively.

The release pointed out that the US is number one in the top 10 countries reporting infections, having received 18% of all reports from the country. Italy follows with 7%, then the Republic of Korea with 6%.

Fortinet seems to think virus authors are on a hiatus, considering virus detections were down 28% for July. Malware detections were also down with a 15% decrease. Bryan Lu of Fortinet is insistant that we can't rest on our laurels, saying "We cannot downplay the importance of regular signature and security updates."



Virus Authors Taking Summer Holiday

[Rich]

BetterInternet is one of the many companies that make up the DirectRevenue aware system. Like 180 solutions each part of the system (software distribution, software removal, ad management) is branded under a different company name. So though BetterInternet might be the largest installed adware, I'd expext many advertisers will think they don't use it.

previous post on DirectRevenue