One of the top computer security software companies has produced its list of top ten malware threats for May.

Florida based Sunbelt Software compiles a monthly top ten malware threats report and the data comes from the company’s VIPRE Antivirus, its anti-malware solution, and CounterSpy, its antispyware application.

And the top ten malware threats for May reflect a growing trend towards behaviour-based detections.

What’s more, the top ten malware threats within May were also amongst the top ten for April, with May’s leading position going to Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT with 27.8% of detections, which was top in April and with more detections, 33.7%.

Coming up on the inside of the list of top ten malware threats for May is INF.Autorun (V) whose detections grew by over half from April to May. The previous period had seen a 40% increase; so the influence of this particular piece of malware is growing considerably and is likely to stay around for some months to come.

Newcomers to the top ten malware threats list for May were FraudTool.Win32.AVSoft (v) which popped in at number eight with 1.3% of detections and Trojan.Win32.Agent at number nine with just over 1.2% of detections. The first one of these little beauties – FraudTool.Win32.AVSoft (v) – installs rogue antivirus software – and the second – Trojan.Win32.Agent – downloads a varying variety of viruses and is a particular insidious Trojan downloader.

Tom Kelchner, Sunbelt Software Research Centre Manager, said about the top ten malware threats:
“The list of ThreatNet top-10 detections in May did not change significantly from the previous month – with a continued high volume of Trojan downloaders. However, the level of generic detections has steadily increased over the past few months, highlighting the importance of behavioural testing via a "sandbox" method to stop malicious applications without individual signature updates. This is a good strategy for stopping zero-day malicious code, or previously unknown malware, which is being generated by the bad guys with more frequency.”

The complete top ten malware threats is as follows:

1. Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT 27.79%
2. INF.Autorun (v) 3.63%
3. Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra 2.14%
4. BehavesLike.Win32.Malware (v) 1.95%
5. Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen 1.78%
6. Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 1.35%
7. Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v) 1.34%
8. FraudTool.Win32.AVSoft (v) 1.32%
9. Trojan.Win32.Agent 1.28%
10. Trojan.Win32.Malware 1.25%

The majority of the threats contained within the top ten malware threats are delivered via social engineering, or stealth installations.

Guest Article by Neil Camp