Anti-virus vendor Sophos has revealed the top ten viruses causing problems for businesses around the world during the month of August 2005.
The report, compiled from Sophos' global network of monitoring stations, reveals that Netsky-P, the worm written by the convicted German teenager, Sven Jaschan, has yet again retained its position at the top of the charts this month. The recent Zotob worms are notable by their absence in the chart despite having received a great deal of press attention for successfully infecting several high profile media organisations.
The top ten viruses in August were as follows:
1 W32/Netsky-P 14.7%
2 W32/Mytob-AS 7.9%
3 W32/Mytob-BE 7.2%
4 W32/Zafi-D 3.6%
5 W32/Zafi-B 2.9%
6 W32/Mytob-C 2.8%
7 W32/Mytob-EP 2.8%
8 W32/Mytob-CX 2.7%
9 W32/Netsky-D 2.5%
10 W32/Mytob-CJ 2.4%
Others 49.5%
The prevalence of the Netsky-P worm rose slightly in August, from 13.9% to 14.7%, but variants of the Mytob worm remain the dominant threat to computer users, accounting for 54% of all viruses reported to Sophos in August. In addition, research now suggests that the Zotob group of viruses is also directly linked to Mytob.
Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos said,
"Mytob and Zotob may spread in different ways, but the source code is very similar. Moreover, the Zotob author's nickname, Diabl0, appears in more than twenty of the Mytob variants, suggesting that they may have been created by the same person. One thing is for sure - Mytob is still causing chaos in organisations that haven't updated their virus protection and patched software vulnerabilities.
Rather than being a sign that virus writers are giving up trying to infect computers, the reason for this decrease is most likely due to August being a favourite holiday time for many people. While people are enjoying a cocktail of sun, sea and sand, a large number of computers are switched off and therefore immune to infection."
The threats listed in the August virus chart have had a much smaller impact and claimed fewer victims than the previous months. Sophos' research shows that 1.99%, or 1 in 50 emails, circulating during the month of August were viral - a significant drop when compared to the May results of 1 in 38 emails.
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