Viruses/Worms News

Microsoft report: Password stealers, fake antivirus most common malware

Monday, August 31, 2009

Trojans that steal passwords for massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG), such as the popular World of Warcraft, were the most commonly removed malware by Microsoft's anti-malware tool in August.

According to the August Top Detection Report posted on Microsoft's Malware Protection Center (MMPC) blog, the company's malware removal tool cleaned more than 8.75 million pieces of malware from 2.18 million U.S. PCs in August.

The most common malware was Win32/Taterf, a family of worms that spread via mapped drives in order to steal login and account details for popular MMORPG games, according to Microsoft.

MMPC added a new threat family, Win32/FakeRean, a Trojan that installs rogue antivirus products (rogueware), to the Microsoft malware removal tool. FakeRean was removed from 162,328 infected machines as of August 24.

Another rogueware Trojan, Win32/Renos, was removed from 228,973 machines, the second-most common infection.

Other common malware removed by Microsoft include the Koobface worm that spreads on social networks and Cutwail and Rustock, which control two of the largest botnets of infected PCs.

U.S. PCs were the most commonly infected, followed by PCs in China and Brazil. China is a top target for online games password stealers and Brazil is a prime target for password stealers aimed at bank accounts.