Anti-virus firm Sophos has revealed the top ten viruses causing problems for businesses around the world during the month of July 2005.
The report, compiled from Sophos' global network of monitoring stations reveals that Netsky-P, the worm written by the recently convicted German teenager, Sven Jaschan, tops the charts this month. However, it is the variants of the Mytob worm that are dominating the polls - accounting for seven of the top ten positions and over 37% of all viruses reported to Sophos in July.
The top ten viruses in July were as follows:
1 W32/Netsky-P 13.9%
2 W32/Mytob-AS 11.6%
3 W32/Mytob-BE 9.3%
4 W32/Mytob-EP 5.5%
5 W32/Zafi-D 3.5%
6 W32/Mytob-CX 3.2%
7 W32/Netsky-D 3.1%
8 W32/Mytob-CJ 2.6%
9 W32/Mytob-CN 2.6%
10 W32/Mytob-AT 2.3%
Others 42.4%
Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos said,
"The sheer volume and range of the Mytob worms sees them hog most positions in the virus chart. It's not the viciousness of the worm that is the problem, but the constant onslaught of slightly differing variants. This month's only new entry into the chart is another family member - Mytob-CX, and despite accounting for only 3.2% of viruses in July, it shows that the Mytob threat continues to plague computer users. The Mytob army of malware is one of the biggest we have ever seen. The criminals behind these attacks are constantly releasing new viral code to do their dirty work for them."
Most of the variants infect networks via email and many are able to take advantage of known software vulnerabilities, for which security patches are available. Many versions are also equipped with malicious code that enables them to communicate with the outside world. Some new variants of the worm have even adopted a trick commonly used by phishers, where an email message directs recipients to a web site. When they visit the site, they involuntarily download the Mytob worm.
Sophos research shows that 2.1%, or 1 in 47 emails, circulating during the month of July were viral - a slight decrease on the previous month, when 1 in 43 emails were infected.
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