Last week malware “winners”

According to data gathered at the Infected or Not website the Bagle.HX worm was responsible for most infections over the last week. Two strains of adware, Comet and Starware, come next in the ranking of the most active malware.

Data from the same website reveals that some 27.15 percent of computers with protection (a security solution installed and up-to-date) scanned this week were infected with some type of malicious code.

Regarding new strains of malware that have appeared, the weekly report from PandaLabs looks at the MSNworm.BU and P2PShared.C worms.

MSNworm.BU spreads through MSN Messenger by sending a message with an attached compressed file to all the infected user’s contacts. If any of these extract and run the file they will be infected. The messages have text similar to the following: “I cant remember anything from this picture:D”,”is this you?:S”, etc.

This worm connects to a web page, from which it downloads another malicious file. It also creates a key in the Windows Registry to ensure it is run every time the session is started up.

P2PShared.C reaches computers with an icon of two tools. When run, it shows an error message. To spread, it is copied to P2P directories with names such as “Windows Vista x86 MultiLang AutoPatcher.rar” or “MSN Messenger 8 Fully Patched for XP Sp2 and ViSTA.rar”.