Computer viruses in July

In July, Hungarian internet surfers were mostly bothered by spammer and online banking data harvesting malware, VirusBuster's stats reveal.

VirusBuster, the Hungary-based specialist of IT security continuously monitors virus occurrence and activity. Data from VirusBuster's mail protection systems -- in-house and externally deployed alike -- is collected and processed. VirusBuster uses the results to generate monthly statistics of the most frequent infections. These monthly virus toplists are published on the company's website as well (http://www.virusbuster.hu/en/viruslab/virus-toplist).

"July's malware landscape in Hungary was dominated by the components of two botnet-building trojans, Bredolab/Oficla and ZBot. Both are well known, and have been in operation for a long time. They are mostly used to distribute spam, but ZBot also collects online banking credentials", explained Gábor Szappanos, the head of VirusBuster's virus lab.

Trojans are malicious programs, which got their name from the legendary wooden horse built by the Greeks to defeat Troy: They pretend to serve users, but in fact they are designed to cheat their victims. Botnets (short for robot networks) are networks of unknowing victim PCs (called zombies) controlled by hackers. Users should get rid of botnet malware as soon as possible, since otherwise they may become accomplices in cybercriminals' activities, warned Gábor Szappanos.

VirusBuster's malware toplist for July 2010: