Tech Shout!

Were you fooled or did you remain smart on this April Fools Day?

Fortinet, a provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions, has revealed the top 10 most reported high-risk security threats for the month of April 2008. According to the report, the fourth month of the year saw a campaign rolled out on 1st April, i.e. April Fools Day along with two online gaming Trojans that was most commonly experienced in Asian countries, including China/Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

According to the report, targeting Asia, the Trojans OnLineGamesEncPK.fam!tr.pws and OnLineGames.SIN went up by 15 and 31 spots, respectively, to rule the sixth and seventh positions on Fortinet’s Top 10 list for April. Furthermore, the Cutwail version Mutant.CV debuted, landing straight on the No. 2 position, was first observed on April Fools Day as a screen-saver attachment in mass mail.

Derek Manky, security researcher for Fortinet said, “With Asia accounting for more than 50 percent of all online gaming revenue worldwide according to recent reports, it’s no surprise that the cyber criminal activity we witnessed this past month were localized attacks to this region.” Adding, “Due to the prosperous nature of the thriving online gaming community, it’s highly likely we will continue to see these types of attacks in the future.”

The other significant malware trends observed during this period include the following:

OnLineGamesEncPK.fam!tr.pws targeted 80 percent of its attack on Taiwan.
The remaining 20 percent were spread among Japan (7.1), the U.S. (1.9), India (1.7), Mexico (1.1) and others.

OnLineGames.SIN also focused 80 percent of its efforts on one Asian country, choosing China to receive the brunt of its attack. Japan (7.6), Hong Kong (4.6), Taiwan (2.3), Korea (1.0) and others made up the remainder.

In addition to the heavy attack on one country, emails seeded with the two online gaming Trojans also leveraged the traditional Chinese language as a localization tactic.

Mutant.CV began its campaign on April Fools Day with concentrated spikes of activity, while the gaming Trojans showed consistent daily volume throughout the month.

Below are the Top 10 individual threats and Top 5 threat families in April.
Top 100 shifts point to the positional changes compared to March’s Top 100 ranking, with “new” representing the malware’s debut in the Top 100.

Top 10 Individual Threats

Rank
Threat Name
Threat Type
% of Detections
Top 100 Shift

No. 1
W32/Netsky!similar
Mass mailer
8.6
+1

No. 2
W32/Mutant.CV!tr.dldr
Trojan
7.2
New

No. 3
HTML/Iframe_CID!exploit
Exploit
6.0
-

No. 4
W32/Pushdo.EV!tr.dldr
Trojan
5.6
-3

No. 5
W32/Virut.A
Virus
5.6
+4

No. 6
W32/OnLineGamesEncPK.fam!tr.pws
Trojan
4.1
+15

No. 7
W32/OnLineGames.SIN!tr.pws
Trojan
2.6
+31

No. 8
W32/MyTob.BH.fam@mm
Mass mailer
2.2
-3

No. 9
W32/Small.FQS!tr.dldr
Trojan
2.0
+7

No. 10
W32/MyTob.FR@mm
Mass mailer
1.5
-4

Top 5 Families

Rank
Malware Family
Percentage
Top 10 Shift

No. 1
Netsky
13.8
-

No. 2
MyTob
8.5
+1

No. 3
Cutwail
7.2
New

No. 4
Virut
6.0
-

No. 5
Pushdo
5.9
-3