Scareware dominates October threats

According to the latest Fortinet report, scareware tactics dominated the October threat landscape and were four times more prominent than in September.

Seven malware variants on the top ten list in October related to scareware and overall October saw the highest level of total malware in more than a year, and four times more than in September.

Scareware attacks ran rampant over Halloween and the high levels of malware can also be partly attributed to recently popular money-making affiliate programs that tempt participants that tempt users with a pay-out for each software download purchased. The tools and kits are readily available to participating affiliates, which accelerates the distribution of scareware.

Botnets are also integrating with scareware and the Trojan downloader Bredolab joined forces with scareware downloaders to add another element of surprise. Bredolab also linked up with the notorious ZBot keylogger, creating a dangerous mix of threats. The two main Bredolab variants detected in October were W32/Bredolab.G and W32/Bredolab.X, which was included in the fake DHL invoice spam campaign.