AVG Reports 55,000 Computers Compromised by Cybercriminals Using Mumba Botnet

One-Third of Infected PCs in the U.S.; Other Affected Nations Include Germany, Spain, UK, Mexico and Canada

AVG Technologies, makers of the world’s most popular free anti-virus software, today issued a report developed by the AVG Web Security Research Team which identified a global network of 55,000 malware-infected computers infected by the Mumba botnet.

The report, which can be downloaded at blogs.avg.com, found that the Mumba botnet has stolen more than 60GB of personal data from users including credentials from social networking Web sites, banking account details, credit card numbers and email communication. The United States had the highest share of PCs infected by the Mumba botnet (33 percent), followed by Germany (17 percent), Spain (7 percent), United Kingdom (6 percent), Mexico and Canada (both 5 percent).

The Mumba botnet was created by one of the most sophisticated group of cybercriminals on the internet known as the Avalanche Group who perfected a mass-production system for deploying phishing sites and data stealing malware. Mumba uses the latest version of Zeus, currently one of the most common malwares.

"The unique infrastructure of the Mumba botnet means that going after the servers hosting the stolen data is now much more difficult than before,” said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, senior vice president at AVG. “As cybercriminals become increasingly sophisticated, it is paramount that consumers and corporations prevent their PCs from becoming the next victim in these dynamic cyber attacks by using anti-virus and LinkScanner tools such as those that AVG offers for free."

AVG FREE’s 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 before they open in real-time for threats. AVG Free or LinkScanner can be downloaded at the AVG Download web page free of charge