Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Microsoft has published their Security Intelligence Report for July – December 2007.

When reviewing the document some items caught my attention. The strategy to distribute malware has been shifted from emails with an attached executable to, sometimes cleverly, constructed emails with a link towards a web site where the malware is downloaded.

At MX Lab we also see an increase of emails with links to web site that include potential harmfull files for download. See the recent article Malware distribution techniques on the MX Lab blog.

This is because many anti virus vendors have improved scanning engines and have heuristic scanning integrated in their programs giving us more and more a zero hour virus protection.

75% to 80% of the phishing attempts is in the English language. Based on our experience we can add that the most popular phishing attempts are related with banks, Google Adwords and PayPal.

You can download the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report for July – December 2007 at the Microsoft Download Center.