Fortinet Reports China Was Targeted by Malware in April 2009

Fortinet® - a market-leading network security provider and worldwide leader of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced the findings from its April 2009 Threatscape Report. The report shows the highest monthly malware volumes detected this year – with online gaming and adware threats prominent. China received the brunt of malware attacks in April, doubling its share from the previous month.

The lucrative marketplace created by online gaming has quickly attracted cyber crime, predominantly in China. China leap-frogged over Japan and the U.S. with a 44.86 percent global malware share in April 2009, nearly doubling its 24.17 percent share from the last report in March.

“April was a busy month for cyber criminals who unleashed the most aggressive malware attacks thus far this year,” said Derek Manky, project manager, cyber security and threat research, Fortinet. “We believe this upward trend will endure with online gaming attacks continuing to dominate, especially with Real Money Trading becoming a big business – now an estimated $2 billion annual market.”

Four new malware variants landed in April’s Top 10 malware list, three of which were online gaming related Trojans. W32/Virut.A is still king of the hill, claiming first position for two consecutive months, building on a year-long run within the Top 10 list. These threats collectively formed a significant portion of April’s detected malware activity.

One of the most active malware families, Waledac, launched a fifth campaign since the beginning of the year. Waledac is multi-functional, with the ability to receive and spew custom spam templates, launch denial of service attacks, and download further components. It was also spotted on Conficker’s network which, in concert with its own various campaigns, has further helped this threat to gain momentum.

The FortiGuard research team compiled threat statistics and trends for April based on data collected from FortiGate® network security appliances and intelligence systems in production worldwide. Customers who use Fortinet’s FortiGuard Subscription Services should already be protected against the threats outlined in this report.

To read the full April Threatscape report which includes the top threat rankings in each category, please visit: http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/reports/roundup_apr_2009.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. Additional discussion on security technologies and threat analysis can be found at the FortiGuard Blog at http://blog.fortinet.com. 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 help enable protection against threats on both application and network layers. FortiGuard Services are updated by the FortiGuard Global Security Research Team, which enables Fortinet to deliver a combination of multi-layered security intelligence and zero-day protection from new and emerging threats. For customers with a subscription to FortiGuard, 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 antispam -- 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 six programs by ICSA Labs: Firewall, Antivirus, IPSec VPN, SSL VPN, Network IPS, and Antispam. Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.

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