Sunbelt Software Announces Top 10 Malware Threats for March

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100406005305/en

SunbeltLabs finds increasing number of generic and behavior-based threats thanks
to improving detection capabilities
CLEARWATER, Fla.--(Business Wire)--
Sunbelt Software, a leading provider of Windows security software, today
announced the top 10 most prevalent malware threats for the month of March 2010.
The report, compiled from monthly scans performed by Sunbelt Software's
award-winning anti-malware solution, VIPRE® Antivirus, and its antispyware tool,
CounterSpy®, is a service of SunbeltLabs.

The list of detections for March shows the continued prevalence of Trojan horse
programs circulating on the Internet and the growing trend of generic and
behavior-based detections in antivirus detections. Generic and behavior-based
detections by the antivirus industry have improved thanks to the massive
increase in new malcode, which number thousands per day.

The top two detections for the month remained in the same positions as last
month. Both Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT (31.07 percent) and
Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen (4.97 percent) maintained approximately the same
pervasiveness in the overall malware tracked. The top 10 made up more than 50
percent of all detections for the month and the top two made up greater than 36
percent of all detections.

Sunbelt`s Top 10 list is similar to February`s detections, however March saw the
additions of INF.Autorun (v) and BehavesLike.Win32.Malware (v) appearing in the
fifth and sixth spots and Trojan.Win32.Agent and Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen (v)
dropped off the list.

Other detections with a significant change in March include Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen
(v), which saw its percentage of total detections grow by almost 50 percent, and
Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra - which saw a significant drop in its share from
3.37 percent to 1.37 percent of all detections.

"Good antivirus defense requires not only up-to-the-minute detections of
malware, but fast detection as well," said Sunbelt Software research center
manager Tom Kelchner. "Generic and behavior-based detections help VIPRE nail a
lot of the polymorphic variants and newly-created malicious code. It might be
new and evade detections for existing malicious activity, but when it runs in
VIPRE`s MX-V virtual environment, the malicious activity is sure to be caught."

"It`s a cat-and-mouse game that`s been going on as long as there have been
antivirus engines. The hackers try to come up with something that will evade
detection and steal something valuable from its victims. Sunbelt creates
detection technology that works fast and seamlessly to not bog down our
customers` systems," Kelchner added.

New entries in the top 10 in March were:

* INF.Autorun (v) - Trojan downloader
* BehavesLike.Win32.Malware (v) - category of suspicious behaving malware

The top 10 results represent the number of times a particular malware infection
was detected during VIPRE and CounterSpy scans that report back to ThreatNet,
Sunbelt Software`s community of opt-in users. These threats are classified as
moderate to severe based on method of installation among other criteria
established by SunbeltLabs. The majority of these threats propagate through
stealth installations or social engineering.

The top 10 most prevalent malware threats for the month of March are:

1. Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT 31.07%
2. Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen 4.97%
3. Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v) 3.76%
4. Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 3.36%
5. INF.Autorun (v) 1.70%
6. BehavesLike.Win32.Malware (v) 1.47%
7. Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra 1.37%
8. Trojan.Win32.Malware 1.37%
9. Trojan.ASF.Wimad (v) 1.23%
10. Virtumonde 1.21%

To see a graphical comparison of the top 10 most prevalent malware infections
between February and March, please visit
http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/malware-threat-report/February-March-2010-Malware-Threat-Report.jpg.

About SunbeltLabs

SunbeltLabs specializes in the discovery and analysis of dangerous
vulnerabilities (i.e., security holes, bugs, maligned features or combination of
operations) that could be exploited for Internet and email attacks. The research
team actively researches new malware outbreaks, creating and testing new threat
definitions on a constant basis. For detailed threat research information and to
view the top 10 threats in real time please visit SunbeltLabs at
http://www.sunbeltsecurity.com.

About Sunbelt Software

Headquartered in Tampa Bay (Clearwater), Fla., Sunbelt Software was founded in
1994 and is a leading provider of Windows security software including enterprise
antivirus, antispyware, email security, and malware analysis tools. Leading
products include the VIPRE® and CounterSpy® product lines, Sunbelt Exchange
Archiver, CWSandbox, and ThreatTrack.

For more information about Sunbelt Software, please visit the company`s website
at: http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com. To learn more about current activities,
products, and ideas at Sunbelt Software, please visit Sunbelt`s corporate blog
at http://www.sunbeltblog.com. To view this release online, go to
http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Press/Releases/?id=347.

Copyright © 2010 Sunbelt Software. All rights reserved. All trademarks used are
owned by their respective companies.

Davies Murphy Group
Brian Alberti, 781-418-2403
sunbelt@daviesmurphy.com
www.daviesmurphy.com
or
Sunbelt Software
Laurie Murrell, 727-562-0101
lauriem@sunbeltsoftware.com
www.sunbeltsoftware.com

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