Zombies continue to be the major danger to Windows security, Microsoft said Monday. During the six months from January to June 2006, over 43,000 new variants of so-called "backdoor Trojans" were revealed.
Zombies continue to be the major danger to Windows security, Microsoft said Monday. During the six months from January to June 2006, over 43,000 new variants of so-called "backdoor Trojans" were revealed.
In addition to that, the company stated at least 50 percent of the computers it cleaned during the period with the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool had at least one backdoor Trojan. While this may seem quite big, it was a decrease from last year's 68 percent figure.
Aside from the backdoor Trojan, the second biggest threat were the keyloggers, with 27,154 variants revealed. This was followed by various downloaders with 13,039 variants, the regular Trojan with 4,497 variants, and the spammer’s mass mailers with 3,426.
"Backdoor Trojans and bots are still a significant percentage of the malicious software detected by Microsoft anti malware products and therefore they serve as a top threat to consumers and businesses alike," Microsoft said in the report.
Although rookits have received a lot of attention in recent times due to Sony's use of the malware to protect its music CDs from illicit copying, their usage continues to be rare. In fact, attacks decreased 50 percent during the period and were ninth overall in rate of occurrence.
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