Cybercriminals party like it’s 2008 as retro-threats make a comeback

Antivirus company McAfee's latest threat report, covering the first quarter of 2013, highlights comebacks for a number of older threats as the growth of newer malware goes into decline. Recent trends towards Android malware, and ransomware are slowing with growth rates slipping back, although actual numbers still show a slight increase. The number of fake antivirus products detected also shows a decline in growth over the previous quarter.

Instead it seems the cybercrime community has served up a blast from the past by resurrecting some old friends. The report shows a global increase in spam volume for the first time in three years. It’s a big increase too with spam volume almost doubling globally in the first quarter of this year. There’s a twist to this though as spammers seem to be targeting specific regions in the hope of snaring new victims. Popular spam topics in this new wave are pump-and-dump stock schemes and growth hormone drugs.

The Koobface worm, first seen in 2008 and aimed at social media users, also made a return. In fact, having been relatively flat for most of last year, Koobface discoveries have tripled in the first quarter of 2013 to new record levels. The cybercrime community obviously believes that social networking presents a rich vein of new victims to exploit.

The third retro-threat is a spike in the number of AutoRun malware samples, reaching a new record level. But rather than being delivered on flash drives and CDs as they have been in the past, AutoRun attacks are now coming from cloud-based file sharing services.

Finally our old friend the password-stealing Trojan shows flat growth rates but returned record numbers of detections. Apple disciples will be happy that new Mac malware has registered flat growth for the past three quarters. That’s no reason for complacency though, as Windows gets more secure Macs present an increasingly tempting target.

Malware peddlars aren’t living entirely in the past, McAfee highlights a 30 percent growth in Master Boot Record (MBR) attacks. This is a relatively new technique aimed at infecting a PC's storage with the goal of taking control of the entire system.

If you're not already feeling pangs of nostalgia for the way malware used to be you can read the full report on the McAfee website.

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