Microsoft: Bot, trojan infections high; rootkits low
eWeek | at | by Mike
New statistics from Microsoft's anti-malware engineering team have confirmed fears that backdoor Trojans and bots present a "significant" threat to Windows users.
However, according to data culled from the software maker's security tools, stealth rootkit infections are on the decrease, perhaps due to the addition of anti-rootkit capabilities in security applications.
The latest malware infection data, released at the RSA Europe conference in Nice, France, covers the first half of 2006. During that period, Microsoft found more than 43,000 new variants of bots and backdoor Trojans that control millions of hijacked Windows machines in for-profit botnets.