GLENDALE, Calif. -- Panda Security, a leading provider of IT security solutions, announced that PandaLabs, Panda Security's laboratory for detecting and analyzing malware, concluded that worms comprised 17.6% of all malware infections in February, up from 15% in January.

According to ActiveScan, Panda Security's online scanner, Trojans accounted for 23.7% of infections and has remained steady for the past several months, but worms have increased for the second month in a row. Worms are becoming increasingly more sophisticated and are now capable of acting in ways that only Trojans previously could.

"The worm boom is caused by an increase in their capabilities. Until recently, most worms were solely designed to spread from one computer to another. Over the last few months, however, there has been an increase in the number of worm strains capable of stealing data, something that, in the past only Trojans and spyware were capable of," said Luis Carrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs. "This hybridization process is making it increasingly difficult to classify malware specimens into one category or another."

Downloader.MDW, a Trojan strain that is designed to drop other malware strains on the infected computer, was the most active malicious code found in February. The Bagle.RC worm took second place, and the Lineage.GXD worm, designed to affect users of the Lineage online game was third. The following table indicates the most active malware samples detected by PandaLabs, with worm strains comprising 9 out of the 10 samples found.

Type Name
Trojan Downloader.MDW
Worm Bagle.RC.
Worm Lineage.GXD.
Worm Bagle.RP.
Worm Lineage.HJT.
Worm Perlovga.A.
Worm Bagle.HX.
Worm Lineage.HIC.
Worm Puce.E.
Worm Lineage.HJB.