Rustock botnet top malware offender, says Cisco

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Botnet was quarter's most common problem

Cisco is reporting that the Rustock botnet was the most common security issue it encountered over the last quarter.

The company said that Rustock, which has been credited as one of the most prolific spam sources on the internet, hit its peak over the summer and ended the quarter with 21 per cent of all events recorded by the Cisco Remote Operations Services.

Cisco believes that Rustock is primarily used for commercial spam, advertising goods such as pharmaceuticals and counterfeit watches.

The company also cited the September LinkedIn malware attacks as a major security event. That attack, fuelled by the Zeus malware trojan, was able to at its peak account for more than 31 per cent of all spam.

In the UK, however, Stuxnet reigned. The botnet claimed 38 per cent of its infected users within the country. An additional 25 per cent of Stuxnet's victims were in Hong Kong, with the Netherlands, Australia and Brunei were also popular targets for the malware.

Despite recent public reports of attacks on Reader, Cisco said that overall attacks targeting the Adobe platform were down in recent months. In September, Reader and Acrobat flaws accounted for just one per cent of attacks, down from three per cent in July.

Java, meanwhile, found itself becoming an increasingly popular attack target over the sae period. Attacks on the platform reached seven per cent of all web malware attacks in September, up from five per cent in July.

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