The exploitation of high-profile news, events, and products through search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning, malicious URLs, and spam attacks remains at the top of GFI's threat list.
GFI uncovered malware masquerading as Skype and Adobe Flash Player browser plug-ins, as well as how spam and malware can compromise users visiting legitimate websites like SourceForge, where a number of pages had been linking to a site distributing the rogue anti-virus FakeRean.
“The fake autowhaler, rogue codec suite and other threats we uncovered in July underscore the growing sophistication and creativity of malware authors, and the continued evolution of cybercrime tactics. The autowhaler is especially telling because it demonstrates that even cybercriminals are not safe from infection on the internet”, said Christopher Boyd, senior threat researcher at GFI Software.
GFI’s top 10 threat detection list is compiled from collected scan data of tens of thousands of GFI VIPRE Antivirus customers who are part of GFI’s ThreatNet automated threat tracking system. The statistics revealed that half of the top 10 threat detections found during July 2011 continue to be trojans, mostly detected in generic form.