Press Releases
AVG Research Discovers 1.2 Million Computers Infected by Cybercriminals Using Eleonore Exploits Toolkit
Sun JVM and Adobe Acrobat Reader Vulnerabilities Top List with Infection Rates of 36 percent
AMSTERDAM, July 22, 2010 – AVG Technologies, makers of the world’s most popular free anti-virus software, today announced that AVG’s Web security research team has discovered a network of 1.2 million malware-infected computers controlled by cybercriminals who were using the Eleonore exploit toolkit – a commercial attack software enabling cybercriminals to infect and monitor compromised PCs.
The two-month-long study by AVG Research researched 165 Eleonore toolkits in use by cybercriminals and concluded that those using the Eleonore exploit toolkit were experiencing a 10 percent success rate in infecting the more than 12 million users visiting their compromised web pages. All 165 domains experienced high volumes of traffic which the cybercriminals managed to compromise. The research was built using AVG LinkScanner product data, identifying URLs that the product blocked when it identified a threat. The full research report can be found on AVG’s blog post at: http://blogs.avg.com.
"The accessibility and sophistication of easy-to-use cybercriminal toolkits proves that cyber gangs are raising the bar to monetize their criminal activities," said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, senior vice president, AVG Technologies. "That is why it's more important than ever for families, corporations and other computer users to protect their computers from being targeted by this kind of increasingly popular cyber attacks by using AVG anti-virus and web security tools like LinkScanner that AVG offers for free."
AVG’s free award winning anti-virus software, in addition to its innovative LinkScanner product, protects users against the ever increasing online web-threats by dynamically scanning the web pages in real-time before users open them in their browser. AVG Free or LinkScanner can be downloaded at the AVG Download web page free of charge, or at www.download.com.
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About AVG Technologies
AVG is a global security software maker protecting more than 110 million consumers and small businesses in 170 countries from the ever-growing incidence of web threats, viruses, spam, cyber-scams and hackers on the Internet. AVG has nearly two decades of experience in combating cyber crime and one of the most advanced laboratories for detecting, pre-empting and combating Web-borne threats from around the world. Its free, downloadable software allows novice users to have basic anti-virus protection and then easily upgrade to greater levels of safety and defense when they are ready. AVG has nearly 6,000 resellers, partners and distributors globally including Amazon.com, CNET, Cisco, Ingram Micro, Play.com, Wal-Mart, and Yahoo!.
http://www.avg.com/press-releases-news
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