Posted by An entry in the Microsoft Malware Protection Center’s Threat Research & Response Blog shows that rogue AV, also known as scareware, is ruling the malware roost, as 6 top of the 10 malicious programs removed by the MSRT (Malicious Software Removal Tool) in the US in October were rogues.Overall the MSRT has cleaned 2,516,235 machines world-wide, with different malware families predominating in different countries, as you would expect. The Microsoft blog shows data from the US, China and Brazil; no rogues are in the top 11 list (yes, 11, I’m not sure why) for China and only one in Brazil, while the majority in the US are rogues.
This list shows the top malware for the US:
| Malware Family | # Threats | # Machines Cleaned |
|---|---|---|
| Alureon | 147,387 | 117,351 |
| Taterf | 121,988 | 116,217 |
| FakeXPA(R) | 108,026 | 103,578 |
| Renos(R) | 69,147 | 55,461 |
| FakeRean(R) | 78,067 | 53,376 |
| Yektel(R) | 52,259 | 51,061 |
| FakeScanti(R) | 70,120 | 50,260 |
| Frethog | 51,038 | 49,526 |
| Daurso | 32,205 | 32,150 |
| Koobface | 43,640 | 27,793 |
| FakeSpypro(R) | 26,530 | 26,242 |
(R)—denotes rogues.Koobface shows up on the list, but not near the top. Conficker is huge in the rest of the world, but not in the US. 6 of the top threats in Brazil and China are password stealers. Microsoft claims that in China these are used for stealing gaming credentials, whereas in Brazil they are used to steal bank account credentials.
[Source: pcmag.com]
