Kaspersky reveals May Top 20

By Staff Writer for Kaspersky

Johannesburg, 03 Jun 2009

A total of 42 520 unique malicious, advertising, and potentially unwanted programs were detected on users' computers in May, a figure only slightly up from the previous month.

This is according to Kaspersky Lab in its May Top 20 lists, rankings made up of the malicious programs, adware and potentially unwanted programs most frequently detected on users' computers.

“There are only two newcomers: Palevo.ddm, a P2P worm, and Swizzor.a, a Trojan in the first ranking,” explains Kaspersky. “The former, in addition to spreading via a range of public peer-to-peer networks, infects removable media. This helps it spread more widely.”

The company says the latter uses some interesting and sophisticated tricks to obfuscate its code and mask its presence on the system.

The first Top 20 is based on data collected by Kaspersky Lab's version 2009 anti-virus product, and is made up of frequently detected malicious programs, adware and potentially unwanted programs. “In the past few months, the changes in the balance between these classes have not exceeded 5%,” says Kaspersky.

Unlike previous months, there were more changes to the second ranking in May, according to the company. It cites the Trojan-Clicker.HTML.IFrame.aga, entering at third place, and the arrival of Virus.Win32.Sality.ae, towards the bottom of the ranking, as two examples.

The second Top 20 presents data on which malicious programs most commonly infected objects detected on users' computers, and is made up largely of malicious programs capable of infecting files.

“IFrame.aga is one more version of the iframe that the now widespread Virus.Win32.Virut.ce uses to infect Web pages. And Sality.ae is the latest version of the well-known Sality virus. The new variant replaces Sality.y after it dropped out of our ranking in January.

“There are three members of this family on our ranking again as a result of this,” Kaspersky explains. It adds that although the new variant appears at the bottom of the list, previous versions lead the company to believe it will begin climbing the ranks.