Majority Of New Malware/ Banker Trojans

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, PandaLabs has determined that malware makers are still hard at work. And unfortunately for everybody's finances, malware makers aren't content to churn out little "gotcha" tricks, instead focusing more than anything on banker Trojans.

Here are all of the unpleasant details in one bite: PandaLabs declared in a statement, "The amount of new malware in circulation has continued to increase at a record pace. In this first quarter, the most prevalent category was once again banker Trojans, accounting for 61 percent of all new malware."

Sean-Paul Correll, a threat researcher at PandaLabs, then followed up these observations by saying, "The growing prevalence of banker Trojans signals to us that online accounts for both consumers and businesses continue to be increasingly attractive financial targets for cybercriminals."

Correll also remarked, "In addition, the widespread availability of DIY kits online has spurred new, less technical individuals into the cybercrime business as evidenced by the Mariposa case."

So it looks like we're in for a rough year if some way isn't found to put a halt to the proliferation of this stuff.

Of course, it's possible to hope that the dismantling of Mariposa might be the start of a trend, but even the arrest of Mariposa's authors could prove to be a problem, considering that they may avoid serving jail time. Other cybercriminals will then have less of an incentive to switch career paths.

PandaLabs recommended that people try to stay safe by being especially cautious when searching for popular topics like the iPad and Facebook applications. Be careful on social networks, too, since malware authors are increasingly using those to distribute their creations.

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