PRESS RELEASE

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. " August 3, 2009 " Malware writing has become a full-fledged business " shaped after corporate models, according to BitDefender', an award-winning provider of innovative anti-malware security solutions. Today, BitDefender released the results of its malware and spam survey from January through June 2009, showing HTML newsletter-impersonating spam and web 2.0 phishing attempts witnessing a sharp rise.

Malware Threats in Review During the fist six months of 2009, malware writers have continued their efforts to infect computer users in order to receive direct financial gain and/or to seize control over their machines. According to the report, Trojan-type malware is on the rise, accounting for 83 percent of the global malware detected in the wild.

While Trojans were the most active e-threats in the last six months, the notorious Downadup Internet worm caused the most damage to users. Downadup managed to infect a record number of worldwide computers (about 11 million) and made headlines of most, if not all, computer magazines and mainstream media. Targeting systems with unpatched MS08-067 vulnerabilities, the worm can send itself to any clean computer it has already infected on the same network and looks to gain access to file shares. Although Microsoft issued an out-of-cycle patch for the vulnerability, the infection is still in the wild, with hundreds of systems compromised on a daily basis.

"The Internet is one of the most important communications vehicles " used for business, schooling and leisure. It has also become a channel for criminals to gain access to a vast number of computer systems, financial data and information," said Vlad Vlceanu, Head of BitDefender Antispam Research Lab. "Cybercriminals are not going to stop looking for ways to enhance their e-threats, which is why it is essential for computer users to make sure they have a security solution in place that can provide them with advanced, proactive protection."

BitDefender found that during the last six months, the most active countries in terms of spreading malware were China, France and the United States, followed by Romania, Spain and Australia.

World's Top 10 Malware from January-June 2009

Rank Malware %