Another of those security trending reports has dropped onto my desk, this one coming from PandaLabs which is now apparently part of 'Panda Security, The Cloud Security Company.' Jeez, someone needs to give the marketing director a kick up the pants for that one. Anyway, back to the report: it seems that during the second quarter of 2009, Trojans accounted for 70 percent of all new malware detected. No surprise there then.
The PandaLabs Quarterly Report also 'reveals' that the malicious use of Twitter is a problem. Meh. Sure, we have seen cross-scripting worms from Mikey, and BlackHat SEO attacks where the trending topics list is targeted. But my hunch is that actually we haven't seen the half of it yet as far as Twitter malware and spam is concerned. The second half of 2009 could be, er, interesting to say the least. Given the number of followers that want to show me their naked pictures or help me get more followers, and not forgetting the hashtag marketing campaigns from the likes of Moonfruit, I expect that 2009 will be the year that Twitter spamming becomes de-rigueur with the junk marketing morons.
Did the report reveal anything else interesting? Not really, although there was a 6.25 percent drop in reported spyware which means it now accounts for less than 7 percent of all new malware. Does this mean that the bad guys are losing? No, it just means they are switching tactics (more fake antivirus scams for example) and pumping out ever increasingly sophisticated Trojans - and Trojans were responsible for some 34 percent of all infections detected by PandaLabs during the quarter covered.