Panda Labs Jan-Mar 2008 Report published

Panda Labs has released their first quarterly report of 2008 about the current Computer Security threats and what users face today in the ever ongoing battle against security threats, ID and Personal Data Theft, viruses, spyware, malware, and others.

Executive Summary:

• At 62.16%, Trojans account for most of the malware, implementing scrambling and distribution functions.
• Trojans that steal users' personal details through distribution channels provided by spammers continue to increase.
• Storm Worm is still active and continues using social engineering techniques to spread massively.
• Scrambling, encryption and packaging techniques aimes at making malware detection more difficult are on the rise.
• Social engineering techniques that exploit the information published on social networks for identity theft are also increasing.
• Its numerous users have made Symbian a target platform for malware creators.

One of the notable things in the document is that we are seeing a return of Master Boot Records exploits; though not with a virus but a rootkit.

From the article (p. 19):

Stealth techniques aimed at carrying out almost-invisible silent infections are evolving.

You can use the F-Secure standalone rootkit scanner Blacklight to scan for MBR infections.

Other topics discussed in the article are: a recap of Storm Worm over the last year, Multi-AV scanners, Web 2.0 attacks, and the latest attacks on mobile phones.

"Quarterly Report Panda Labs (January - March 2008)"