KASPERSKY LAB DETECTS 25 MILLIONTH MALWARE

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
17.06.2009 14:05 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content
management solutions, has detected its 25 millionth malicious program.

Every year the number of IT threats increases exponentially. Kaspersky
Lab recently forecast a ten-fold increase in malicious programs,
from 2.2 million in 2007 to 20 million in 2008. However, the rate
of growth demonstrated by the cybercrime industry has surpassed even
the most exaggerated predictions. A new modification of Koobface was
detected by the specialists at Kaspersky Lab on 9 June and became
the 25 millionth malicious program added to the company’s antivirus
databases. Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface targets users of the popular social
networking sites Facebook and MySpace. This latest version of Koobface
confirms earlier predictions by Kaspersky Lab that social networking
sites would be the target of more and more IT threats.

The worm uses a simple propagation method: users of social networking
sites receive what appears to be a message from a friend containing a
link to a video clip on an unknown site. When users attempt to play
the video, they are prompted to update Flash Player. Instead of an
update, however, a Koobface worm is installed that contains backdoor
functionality allowing instructions from a remote management server
to be run on the computer.

The proliferation of the Koobface family confirms what Kaspersky
Lab has been saying for some time – malicious programs are becoming
more and more numerous and they are using increasingly sophisticated
technology. The company’s experts correctly predicted back in early
2008 that web fraudsters would be concentrating more of their efforts
on social networking sites. It is also evident that the technical
concepts behind these new threats are increasingly complex. In order
to effectively combat modern malware such as Koobface, an integrated
antivirus solution is needed that provides effective multi-layered
protection.

All consumers using Kaspersky Lab’s personal or corporate products are
fully protected against all known versions of Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface,
Kaspersky Lab’s press center said.