Tales of the unexpected…and the expected: Malware statistics for June

Kaspersky Lab announces the publication of its Monthly Malware Statistics for June 2010. There was a surprise return to the Top 20 list of malware detected on the Internet for Trojan-Downloader.JS.Pegel.b.

This script downloader, designed to infect legitimate websites, returned to the list in third place after a period of relative obscurity. When a user visits an infected page, Pegel redirects them to a site controlled by a cybercriminal, which in turn surreptitiously downloads various malicious programs to the victim’s computer. Pegel.b makes use of a variety of PDF exploits and the Java CVE-2010-0886 exploit.

Unlike Pegel.b, the presence of the Exploit.JS.Pdfka family in our rating came as no surprise. The release of every new update from Adobe is now accompanied by several variants of this exploit which inevitably make it into the Top 20 malicious programs. In June alone, three variants of Exploit.JS.Pdfka entered the list of Internet-borne malware at sixth, eighth and fourteenth places.