Virus authors 'pack' malware to avoid detection

A variety of malware threats, rather than one specific virus, dominated the security landscape this February, according to security firm BitDefender. However, the company said that all the threats in its Top 10 Malware List for February used the same packing method to obfuscate the payload.

"Virus writers use packers to decrease the size of the virus and to increase the cost of analysis," said Sorin Dudea, head of BitDefender AV Research. "Unpacking something packed in an as-yet unknown manner takes a lot of time and skill." Malware using this single packing method accounted for 37.02 per cent of all detections in February.

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