Sophos has published a report revealing the top ten viruses and hoaxes causing problems for businesses around the world during the month of April 2005.
The report, compiled from Sophos' global network of monitoring stations, shows that Zafi-D, which first appeared at the end of 2004, continues its reign at the top of the list for the fifth month running, accounting for 46.6% of all reports. Only one new threat - Mytob-Z - has managed to break into the chart for April, appearing in seventh place.
The top ten viruses in April 2005 were as follows:
1 W32/Zafi-D 46.6%
2 W32/Netsky-P 20.6%
3 W32/Zafi-B 4.5%
4 W32/Netsky-D 4.5%
5 W32/Netsky-Z 2.5%
6 W32/Netsky-B 2.4%
7 W32/Mytob-Z 1.3%
8 W32/MyDoom-O 1.2%
9 W32/Netsky-C 1.1%
10 W32/Netsky-Q 1.0%
Others 14.3%
Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos said,
"Old viruses are still taking advantage of poorly protected computers in April. The Zafi family of viruses accounts for over 50.0% of all the viruses reported to Sophos in the last month. Perhaps the success of these worms lies in their ability to spread in multiple languages, catching out unwary users all over the world. Users should not only be suspicious of unsolicited email in any language, they should also be ensuring up-to-date anti-virus protection is in place to thump this virus family on the head."
"Although Mytob-Z only accounts for a small percentage of the top ten reports, it is the only new worm that has managed to break into the stronghold of old threats," continued Theriault. "First sighted in mid-April, Mytob-Z is a nasty piece of work - not only does it spread ferociously, but it plants a backdoor Trojan horse which can be used by remote hackers to gain access and control over a victim's computer. The computer can then be spied upon or used to send spam or launch denial of service attacks."
Sophos analysed and protected against 1146 new viruses in April. Sophos research shows that 2.2%, or one in 46 emails, circulating during the month of April were viral. This figure is slightly lower than last month when 1 in 38 emails were viral.
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