Endpoint Protection

Okay, I did just coin the term “AV Friday” as a joke and it’s not to be taken too seriously. So, what is AV Friday all about? Many people living in the U.S. will be familiar with the term Black Friday—the day after Thanksgiving and generally the busiest retail shopping day of the year in the U.S. Some may have heard of the term Cyber Monday, which refers to the Monday immediately after Black Friday and thought to be the ceremonial kick-off, or busiest day, of the holiday online shopping season in the U.S. between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Having both of these days in mind made me wonder—what was the busiest antivirus protection day for Symantec over the last year? For fun, AV Friday was born.

On Friday, April 17, 2009, Symantec antivirus signatures reported protecting over 3.5 million customers. This works out at roughly 40 computers a second being protected by Symantec antivirus signatures. Below is a list of the top five malware detections on that day:

1. Trojan Horse
2. Bloodhound.Exploit.196
3. Downloader
4. W32.Downadup.B
5. Bloodhound.SONAR.2

It’s no surprise really that the now-infamous Downadup (Conficker) worm appears on this list. It shows just how prevalent Downadup was at that time, even after a Microsoft update (MS08-067) was available for several months to stop its spread and good antivirus detection was in place.  It is extremely unlikely that April 17, 2010, will be Symantec’s busiest day, but just for fun I will be keeping a close eye on the figures that day.

A happy Thanksgiving to all of our U.S. readers, good hunting to all those Cyber Monday shoppers, and remember to stay safe online by ensuring you have the latest Symantec definitions installed.