The Storm Worm dominated malware ratings last month, accounting for around half of malicious software tracked, according to the latest figures from security firms.
The worm, which hit the headlines last month after showing up in numerous e-mails disguised as a message about recent storms in Europe, was February’s top ranked threat by security software firm Sophos, accounting for 50.3% of all malware tracked.
The Storm Worm, also known as the W32/Tibs.gen threat, scored highly in security systems vendor Fortinet’s February rankings as well, coming in fourth with 3.91% of all e-mail threat detections.
According to Guillaume Lovet, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) threat response team leader for Fortinet, 36 different variants of the Storm Worm were seen active during the month, although one variant accounted for nearly 60% of related detections.
“The overwhelming presence of the Storm Worm is not without consequence as it is being leveraged to generate and relay massive amounts of spam,” Lovet said.
The Storm Worm was kept out of the top three spots in Fortinet’s rankings by three phishing threats, with the HTML/BankFraud.E!phish scoring the highest number of detections during the month.
