70% of malware discovered during the first 3 months of 2006 was related to generating financial gain according to a recently published security report.

One of the conclusions of the PandaLabs report is the confirmation that financial profit has become a priority for malware authors and distributors. Of all malware detected by the company’s online scanner during the first quarter of this year, around 40 percent was spyware. Trojans accounted for 17 percent of the total. Dialers made up 8 percent and bots 4 percent of the total.

Bots are a form of malware that allow for an external party to take control of a system and adding the “zombie” machine to a network called a botnet. Botnets are commonly used for extortion purposes, i.e. threatening a company to bombard a site with traffic created by zombie systems unless an amount of money is paid. The other common use for botnets is the distribution of spam.

Email worms constituted only 4% percent of the total. The reason for the drop according to PandaLabs is that email worms tend to stir up a lot of publicity wheras spyware, trojans and bots are a little sneakier and can remain undetected for long periods of time if a user does not regularly scan their system or keep their scanner updated.

Of new threats to emerge, Trojans have accounted for the lion’s share at 47% - with the most common Trojans being Downloaders, which are used to download other malicious software onto a system, and Bankers, used to glean sensitive banking data from a compromised system.

The quarterly report from PandaLabs report can be downloaded for free here:

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