Conficker still lingering as users fail to apply basic protection

ESET claimed that with Conficker appearing at the top of its monthly threat report once again, users are still not taking basic steps such as timely patching and disabling Autorun to protect against an attack.

The report also claimed that massmailers such as Netsky, Mydoom and Bagle are still lingering despite patches being released.

David Harley, director of malware intelligence for ESET, said: “I would guess that right now, much of the continuing prominence of Conficker in the ratings is due to lots of machines, mainly home machines or botnetted business machines, that are never patched or properly protected by AV.

“This is often because the owner doesn't bother with all that, or maybe sometimes because of a longstanding infection that's blocking patches and updates and has never been noticed.”

ESET encouraged users to keep up-to-date with system patches, disable Autorun, and not to use unsecured shared folders.

Meanwhile, Fortinet's Derek Manky claimed that the company's June 2009 Threatscape report showed that for the first time in a long while, Netsky has been knocked out of its malware Top 10 list. It also claimed that two of the main threat drivers seen this year, Online Gaming Trojans and Virut, remain very active with Online Gaming Trojans in first and tenth positions.

See original article on scmagazineuk.com