World's Top Malware

The malware landscape has always been very dynamic. New threat types and malware always replace the old ones. The prevalence of a particular malware family at any given time is dependent upon multiple factors like the business model, the efficiency of the person(s) driving this malware, and sometimes, actions by the anti malware industry. For example, due to efforts of the research community, Storm 1.0 and Srizbi, which were once the world's largest botnets, are history now. Due to certain design limitations, IRC botnets which were dominant back in 2004-2006 are no longer very popular. We have also seen a constant uptick in new banking trojans. The popularity of online banking has led cyber criminals to seek huge opportunities by operating info stealers. The Web 2.0 era is responsible for giving birth to a new breed of malware spreading through social networking.  A perfect example is Koobface. Security awareness in the public at large led to fears about these malware threats which gave a boost to rogue "antivirus" software.

The first principle of a successful defense is identifying the enemies and their strengths. Believing in the philosophy of "keeping your friends close but your enemies closer" is a big step towards defeating your opposition. So let's do it. What are the latest trends? What are the world's most widespread malware and what these do? I am going to answer a few of these questions today based on data collected by FireEye during the last quarter.