Malware Threats In Romania Doubled In 1H, To 1.6M - BitDefender

Most cyber threats affecting Romanians in the first half of the year were malware applications disseminated internationally, the company said in a press release Monday.

In January-June, BitDefender identified a daily average of 9,000 new threats. The most significant Romanian malware threat is a clone of the Palevo worm, found in February 2004 and called Win32.Worm.IM.J, which disseminates itself via Yahoo! Messenger.

Ransomware (applications that encrypts data and for which the attacker then demands ransom) was also present in Romania in the first six months of 2010. One of these was Application.Scareware.Keytz, which restricted users' access to their own computer until the users transferred EUR3 in a pre-paid account.

In the first six months of the year, Romania was ninth in a ranking of the most active countries as a source of spam.

"Although very visible by number of messages, spam sent from Romania is largely the result of infection with several bots used internationally. Spam campaigns «made in Romania» are relatively few and promote both services and products that are illegal or borderline illegal," the report states.

Numerous phishing campaigns have also been detected in Romania in the first six months of the year and almost exclusively targeted banks. Besides the "classical" approaches, cybercriminals took advantage of new laws in Romania that requires clients to update their personal information in a move to fight money laundering.

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