Malware, PUPs and Angler Exploit Kit Are on the Rise

by Sean Michael Kerner

In the fourth quarter of 2014, McAfee Labs’ mobile malware tally grew to just over 6 million samples.

Across all forms of malware that it tracks, McAfee Labs now has a collection of 350 million samples. The rate of malware samples continues to grow, with a 17 percent growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2014 compared with the third quarter of 2014.

Spam domains can be hosted in any country in the world, but more than half of them are found in the United States.

In 2014, McAfee Labs found Angler to be the most prevalent exploit kit in use, followed in second place by Sweet Orange.

Exploit kits tend to have multiple variants, as attackers try out different combinations of tools and techniques. In 2014, the Angler exploit kit also had the most variants across the eight exploit kits tracked in the McAfee Labs report.

As an exploit kit, Angler leverages known vulnerabilities to infect a victim with a malicious payload. The actual payloads deployed by Angler varied throughout 2014, with the Zbot Trojan being among the most common payloads.

Potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) were a concern for Intel Security customers throughout 2014. PUPs include various forms of adware that end up on systems, potentially introducing security and privacy risks.

McAfee Labs reported that it sees PUPs on more than 91 million systems in a typical 24-hour period. The Browsefox adware is the most common PUP encountered.