Trojans account for six of the top 10 malware threats of February and the report also confirmed the supremacy of Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT as the number one bug, growing from last month to 22.97 per cent of total detections.
Once in a user’s system, these Trojans, associated with fake security programs, perform a scan of the computer and produce false warnings so that victims who take the bait buy malicious security software.
“These types of attacks notoriously cause a great deal of stress for the victim in addition to simply infecting their computer,” said Chris Boyd, senior threat researcher at GFI Labs.
GFI Labs also pointed to the growth of other forms of malware, which tend to be harder to detect. Among those are PDF exploits, which have shown a small increase since January.
“PDF exploits continue to be problematic, showing a small increase since January. February has also seen continued use of fake Java applet installs to infect PCs with malware,” Boyd said.
“With new attacks popping up every day, users need to always stay cautious and research programs they plan to download when there is any doubt.”
He also pointed to infected videogame patches distributed on P2P networks and phishing attempts on popular retailer Play.com.
This article originally appeared at itpro.co.uk