What's the most common type of malware on the Internet? Viruses? Botnet code? How about password-stealing worms, designed to victimize online gamers?
Microsoft said Thursday it had removed nearly 1 million samples of a particularly virulent password-stealing worm in the first half of February. The company's Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) rooted out more than 981,000 copies of a family of programs called
Win32/Taterf,
best known for stealing usernames and passwords for games such as World of Warcraft, Legend of Mir and Gamania.
