Panda Security notices growth of potentially unwanted programs

6th October 2007

Panda Security announced a considerable increase in the detection of harmful objects in the category of PUP (potentially unwanted programs); the results of the portal Infected or Not show, that such programs made up half a list of 10 most commonly found by anti-virus scanners NanoScan and TotalScan malicious codes.
"The increase of the number of PUP occurs because these programs are often installed on PCs by other malicious codes, such as trojans or adware. In such cases, PUP often serve as supplements to these malicious codes." - said Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs.
According to the classification of PandaLabs, PUP include programs installed on a computer without user`s agreement and, through their characteristics, capable of putting a negative impact on the security of user`s data, their privacy, the use of computer resources, etc. The list of the most popular PUP for the last week includes MyWebSearch, FunWeb, Processor, and HideWindow.S KillApp.B.