All Hail AdWare, King of Malware

As per usual, every month the security companies release a Top Ten Most [something] malware chart, and when it was Kaspersky's turn to present the world with its findings, the people there watched in awe how, for the first time ever, the virus branch of malicious programs was dethroned by adware.

The situation is somehow similar to the old dynasties, that ruled their land for a while and then, when the decline was imminent due to cousins inter-marrying and giving birth to not-so-bright offspring as heirs to the throne, another came and took its place. The Middle Ages are full of similar stories, and it just goes to show that scraping the gene pool doesn't pay.

Back to security threats, the Virtumonde-gen adware package appeared the most frequent in the online scans conducted using tools from Kaspersky Labs in February. In case you've noticed, your anti-virus popping up warning you of something called "not-a-virus:AdWare.Win32.Virtumonde.gen," you too have been targeted by it. I know I have, but was not aware that the infection had reached such a magnitude. However, it was of course helped by some Trojan downloader buddy strains, else it couldn't have been so successful.

In the list of new entries on the malware stage, more than half were actually Trojans of all kinds, dialers, droppers and downloaders, so popular because they often provide a backdoor for other malicious code to find its way onto the victim's PC. "Trojan-Downloaders that go undetected enable cyber criminals to update malware on already compromised machines and so extend their 'shelf-life'," David Emm, senior technology consultant at Kaspersky Labs UK, wrote on the company's website.

Here's the Top 10 found by Kaspersky's online scanner:

1. Virtumonde_gen adware (2.86 per cent)
2. Bagle-OF email worm (1.32)
3. Dialer-YZ Trojan (1.27)
4. Small-ieg Trojan (1.21)
5. RAS-A password stealer (1.01)
6. Brontok-Q email email worm (0.75)
7. Zlob-fjb Trojan downloader (0.72)
8. Ardamax-n Trojan (0.53)
9. Rays email worm (0.46)
10. Agent.dnu Trojan dropper (0.44)