Trojans remain most common e-threat, report shows

Posted by Louise Tate

The new Sunbelt Software monthly malware report shows that trojans remain the most common e-threat facing IT outsourcing customers.

According to the study, many of December's malware threats are featured in January's rankings, with Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT, the generic detection for trojans, retaining the top spot for the third successive month.

Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen, Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen, Trojan.Win32.Malware and INF.Autorun were other pieces of malware which have threatened IT outsourcing users over December.

Michael St Neitzel, vice president of threat research at Sunbelt Software, predicted trojans will remain the most common type of malware of the foreseeable future.

"Trojans used to download and install a wide variety of other malware and those are the real moneymakers for the bad guys," he explained.

Recently, Javier Merchan, a spokesman for Panda Security, said the number of malware threats is likely to grow "exponentially" in the next 12 months.