Trojan/Worm Hybrids On The Rise

Hybrid worms that can steal information are being used more and more by hackers.

It becomes less and less safe to dip a toe in the waters. Panda Security has said that hackers are now using a new generation of worm/Trojan hybrids thatare designed not only to spread from one computer to another like a worm, but also steal data like a Trojan.   Luis Carrons, technical director of PandaLabs, told Vnunet,   "The wormboom is caused by an increase in their capabilities. Until recently, most worms were solely designed to spread from one computer to another. Over the past few months, however, there has been anincrease in the number of worm strains capable of stealing data, making it increasingly difficult to classify malware specimens into one category or another."   The company says worms wereresponsible for 17.6% of all malware infections last month, marking a rise from 15% in January.   The Trojan infection rate remained steady at 23.7%.   PandaLabs said that Downloader.MDW, aTrojan built to put other malware strains on the infected computer, was the most active malware, followed by Bagle.RC and the Lineage.GXD worm.