As of October 21st, the MSRT has removed the newly added threat, Win32/FakeScanti from 56,700 infected machines. For this month, it was the 12th most prevalent threat family worldwide and 7th in the US. Overall the MSRT has cleaned 2,516,235 machines this month from all kinds of malware infections.
We all know the threat landscape is not homogenous across geographic regions. Let’s take a look at US, China, and Brazil as a case study.
| United States | China | Brazil |
| Family | Threats | Machines Cleaned | Family | Threats | Machines
Cleaned | Family | Threats | Machines Cleaned |
| Alureon | 147,387 | 117,351 | Lolyda | 77,781 | 72,863 | Taterf | 72,464 | 70,069 |
| Taterf | 121,988 | 116,217 | Frethog | 21,927 | 20,042 | Bancos | 67,577 | 59,414 |
| FakeXPA | 108,026 | 103,578 | Ceekat | 9,440 | 8,767 | Frethog | 33,455 | 32,009 |
| Renos | 69,147 | 55,461 | Conficker | 8,899 | 8,427 | Banker | 27,421 | 26,420 |
| FakeRean | 78,067 | 53,376 | Hupigon | 5,127 | 4,879 | Conficker | 19,664 | 18,398 |
| Yektel | 52,259 | 51,061 | Parite | 7,518 | 4,592 | Banload | 18,617 | 18,121 |
| FakeScanti | 70,120 | 50,260 | RJump | 3,875 | 2,552 | Cutwail | 8,452 | 5,269 |
| Frethog | 51,038 | 49,526 | Brontok | 980 | 969 | Alureon | 3,656 | 3,053 |
| Daurso | 32,205 | 32,150 | Taterf | 1,177 | 963 | Renos | 3,192 | 2,228 |
| Koobface | 43,640 | 27,793 | Corripio | 980 | 855 | IRCbot | 1,929 | 1,874 |
| FakeSpypro | 26,530 | 26,242 | Sdbot | 776 | 770 | Brontok | 1,768 | 1,739 |
Note: Rogues in italics; Password Stealer (PWS) bolded
Some key takeaways:
- In the US (as well as other English speaking countries) rogues are predominant. Six of the top ten threat families in the US are rogues or rogue-related trojan downloaders. This poses a challenge for the end users to identify the legit AV products when there are so many rogue products popping up on the users’ machines.
- Six of the top ten threat families in China are password stealers, most of which are hunting for online gamers’ credentials.
- Six of the top ten threat families in Brazil are also password stealers, though a lot of them (Bancos, Banker and Banload) tend to target online banking credentials in Brazil.
We close, as we always do, by urging you to take action and protect yourself.
Scott Wu