AhnLab warns of surge in regionalised malware

Korean security vendor AhnLab is warning of an increase in malicious threats targeted at specific regions, including rogue anti-virus attacks capable of displaying dynamically in the local language.

The firm's latest AhnLab Security Emergency Response Center report for Q1 2011 revealed that well-known threats such as Conficker and Bredolad are increasingly being architected to surmount language barriers which may have previously hindered their success across geographies.

Trojans remain the most common malicious code at 38.1 per cent, followed by adware at 28.7 per cent and droppers at 14.6 per cent. The number of malicious URLs increased by 14 per cent over the period to 11,089, the report found.

Fake anti-virus attacks also continue to grow in number and sophistication, AhnLab found.

"These fake malicious programs are now available in multiple languages. There are no longer restrictions in spreading malicious code and extorting money caused by language," the report noted.

"The graphical user interface gets translated to the language of the OS the rogue anti-virus is running on. And it is expected to get more sophisticated."

The surge in this so-called scareware at the end of 2010 prompted V3.co.uk readers to vote that only harsher prison sentences could help address the problem by acting as a deterrent to the cyber criminals involved.

AhnLab also claimed that "the number of Android malware soared in Q1 2011" owing to the open nature of the Android application ecosystem, although the company was unable to provide any more detailed stats to back up this statement at the time of writing.