Seventy percent of virus writers focused on creating contracted spyware.

Aladdin Knowledge Systems Ltd. have announced it now estimates that more than 70 percent of virus writers worldwide are now focused on creating contracted spyware.

Detailed analysis conducted by the Aladdin Content Security Response Team (CSRT) evaluating recent viruses and virus writer activity concludes that spyware is the favorite among malicious code writers, as it allows them to wrap their "technology" and sell it or even introduce their own money-making ventures.

Comment:

Analysis over the last several months confirms that the majority of virus writers are shifting away from creating complicated virus purely aimed at causing havoc, and instead, are creating spyware that is linked to organised crime and illegal money-making opportunities. Aladdin is confident that it will continue to we a growing number of spyware applications linked to organised crime, jointly created by those with the resources to create the applications and those with the resources to quickly utilise the data stolen. This is a major change from the types of threats that we saw emerging just a few years ago.

In response to this fast-growing threat, Aladdin recently added gateway protection signatures to its Aladdin esafe product to identify hundreds of new spyware components and spyware communications. An integrated, proactive content security and anti-virus protection solution for large orgarusations, Aladdin esafe now guards against spyware, password stealing Trojans, and multipurpose automated zombie bot networks that are used for various malicious activities such as spamming, phishing, denial of service and using victim PCs as attack proxies.

www.aladdin.com