Adware Uses Trickery to Catapult Onto Fortinet's Most-Reported Threats for May 2008

Market Wire, June, 2008

Fortinet® -- the pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions -- today announced the top 10 most reported high-risk threats for May 2008. The strongest development of the month showed adware Vapsup flooding users with advertisements for rogue virus protection software. Vapsup jumped 42 positions to land on the second spot, just .01 percent behind persistent malware leader, Netsky. From using plug-ins that hi-jack control of users' Web browser navigation to rogue antivirus scanner pop-ups, Vapsup had a bagful of tricks and scare tactics to lure the unsuspecting user into clicking affiliate links. The incentive for all this trickery was the per-click payouts through affiliate marketing programs linking back to servers located mostly in Russia and the U.S.

"Judging by the high level of activity by Vapsup in the past month, the cyber criminals behind this adware should be getting a huge payday," said Derek Manky, security researcher for Fortinet.

Fortinet's FortiGuard(TM) Global Security Research Team compiled this report based on intelligence gathered from FortiGate(TM) multi-threat security systems in production worldwide. Customers who use Fortinet's FortiGuard Subscription Services are already protected against the threats outlined in this report.

Additional malware trends observed during this period include the following:

--  Online gaming Trojan activity continues in Asia, still concentrated in
    Taiwan and China;
--  An Iframe injection campaign runs strong through Iframe.DN, pointing
    to Korean servers;
--  Parasitic file infector, Virut.A, which made itself known in March
    remains in the top five for three consecutive months, showing longevity.
    

Following are the Top Ten individual threats and Top Five threat families in May. Top 100 shifts indicate positional changes compared to April's Top 100 ranking, with "new" representing the malware's debut in the Top 100.

Top Ten Individual Threats
                                                        % of     Top 100
Rank   Threat Name                      Threat Type  Detections   Shift
1      W32/Netsky!similar               Mass mailer     8.18       -
2      Adware/Vapsup                    Adware          8.17        42
3      HTML/Iframe_CID!exploit          Exploit         6.25       -
4      W32/Virut.A                      Virus           5.05        1
5      W32/Pushdo.EV@mm                 Trojan          3.49       new
6      W32/OnLineGamesEncPK.fam!tr.pws  Trojan          2.35       -
7      HTML/Iframe.DN!tr.dldr           Trojan          1.99        7
8      W32/MyTob.BH.fam@mm              Mass mailer     1.99       -
9      W32/OnLineGames.ADRE!tr.pws      Trojan          1.72       new
10     W32/Zafi.E@mm                    Mass mailer     1.65        8


Top Five Families

Rank   Malware Family    Percentage   Top 10 Shift
1      Netsky            14.0              -
2      MyTob             8.0               -
3      Virut             5.5                1
4      Pushdo            3.7                1
5      MyDoom            2.5                1

To read the full May report, please visit: http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/reports/roundup_may_2008.html . For ongoing threat research, bookmark the FortiGuard Center ( http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/ ) or add it to your RSS feed by going to http://www.fortinet.com/FortiGuardCenter/rss/index.html . To learn more about FortiGuard Subscription Services, visit http://www.fortinet.com/products/fortiguard.html .

FortiGuard Subscription Services offer broad security solutions including antivirus, intrusion prevention, Web content filtering and anti-spam capabilities. These services enable protection against threats on both application and network layers. FortiGuard Services are continuously updated by the FortiGuard Global Security Research Team, which enables Fortinet to deliver a combination of multi-layered security intelligence and true zero-day protection from new and emerging threats. These updates are delivered to all FortiGate, FortiMail and FortiClient products.

About Fortinet ( www.fortinet.com )

Fortinet is the pioneer and leading provider of ASIC-accelerated unified threat management, or UTM, security systems, which are used by enterprises and service providers to increase their security while reducing total operating costs. Fortinet solutions were built from the ground up to integrate multiple levels of security protection -- including firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention, VPN, spyware prevention and anti-spam -- designed to help customers protect against network and content level threats. Leveraging a custom ASIC and unified interface, Fortinet solutions offer advanced security functionality that scales from remote office to chassis-based solutions with integrated management and reporting. Fortinet solutions have won multiple awards around the world and are the only security products that are certified in seven programs by ICSA Labs: (Firewall, Antivirus, IPSec, SSL, Network IPS, and Anti-Spyware). Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.