According to Panda Software, while malicious threats may present calm, stagnant trends on a surface level, the malware landscape is just witnessing a shift in the strategy of attacks. In this context, Panda Software is joining the crowd which claims that the illusion of safety created by the absence of massive epidemics is increasing the risks associated with a lax security level.

"A revealing example of this new malware dynamic is the controversial MS06-040 vulnerability, which constitutes the typical security problem exploited by worms causing large-scale epidemic. Every day, examples of malware are detected that take advantage of this flaw, but they have been designed to act discreetly," revealed Panda in the press release.

Based on the statistics gathered via the Panda ActiveScan free online antivirus scanner, Sdbot.ftp of the Sdbot worm family is the malware with the largest frequency of detection. Runner up in the malicious code ranking for August is Jupillites.G. The podium is completed with the Netsky.P worm.

"Fourth was the Sinowal.BV Trojan, followed by Bagle.pwdzip, which comprises several variants of the Bagle worm that spread via email in a password-protected ZIP file. W32/Parite.B (a polymorphic virus that infects executables files with an EXE extension, and SRC files, screensavers), and the Downloader.IOL Trojan, designed to download other files onto the target system, were sixth and seventh in the ranking, respectively," revealed Panda.

Exploit/Metafile, Ailis.A.worm and Qhost.gen close the malware top ten. Panda Software's ranking ends with a frequency of detection of 0.44% for Qhost.gen, while Sdbot.ftp. worm has amounted a total of 1.88%.