New generation of Trojan-like worms causes worm boom

By Isabelle Chaize

New forms of more sophisticated worms, which can act like Trojans, have been causing a increase in the amount of worm infections.

The new hybrid Trojan-worms are designed to steal confidential information from users, whereas until now worms’ only purpose was to spread from one computer to another, according to Luis Carrons, technical director of PandaLabs.

The percentage of all malware accounted for by worm strains has gone up from 15% in January to 17.6% in Februrary, the second increase in a row, warned Panda Security. In comparison, they found that the proportion of malware made up by Trojans had stayed at a steady figure of around 23.7% over the past few months.

‘The worm boom is caused by an increase in their capabilities’ said Carrons, adding that ‘over the past few months, there has been an increase in the number of worm strains capable of stealing data, making it increasingly difficult to classify malware specimens into one category or another.’

In February the most active malicious codes detected by PandaLabs were:

1. Trojan Downloader.MDW
2. Worm Bagle.RC
3. Worm Lineage.GXD
4. Worm Bagle.RP
5. Worm Lineage.HJT
6. Worm Perlovga.A
7. Worm Bagle.HX
8. Worm Lineage.HIC
9. Worm Puce.E
10. Worm Lineage.HJB

The Lineage worms are designed to attack users of the online Lineage game.