1 February 2005
Top ten viruses and hoaxes reported to Sophos in January 2005
Sophos, a world leader in protecting businesses against spam and viruses, has published a report revealing the top ten viruses and hoaxes causing problems for businesses around the world during the month of January 2005.
The report, compiled from Sophos's global network of monitoring stations, shows that Zafi-D, which appeared at the end of 2004, maintains its position at the top of the chart for a second consecutive month.
The top ten viruses in January 2005 were as follows:
"Zafi-D tops the chart for the second consecutive month, accounting for nearly half of all reports in January. It's disturbing that this worm, which spreads under the guise of a Christmas greeting, is continuing to cause so much trouble into the new year," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "Recipients are probably opening these mails thinking they have received belated Christmas cheer from a friend or colleague, but if businesses want this threat and others to stop plaguing them, they should protect their gateway with automatically updated virus protection"
"The second most commonly encountered virus in January - Netsky-P - is still causing considerable nuisance. Protection against this worm has been available since March 2004, but unfortunately it seems there will always be computers connected to the internet which are poorly defended enabling the worm to continue to spread, attempting to infect every other Windows PC it happens upon," continued Cluley.
Sophos analysed and protected against 1,329 new viruses in January. The total number of viruses Sophos now protects against is 99,829. Sophos research shows that over 4.3%, or one in 23 emails, circulating during the month of January were viral. This figure is a little lower than last month when 1 in 18 emails were viral.
The top ten hoaxes reported to Sophos during January were as follows:
"Two new entries to the hoax chart this month come in the form of emails which relate to the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster," continued Cluley. "The 'unidentified tsunami boy' chain letter was a genuine cry for help as well-intented internet users forwarded the picture of a boy caught up in the disaster. The 'letter from tsunami victim' is a malicious scam similar to the well-known Nigerian Letter scams designed to extort money from email users. The best advice is to simply delete all unsolicited mail."
Sophos has made available a free, constantly updated information feed for intranets and websites which means users can always find out about the latest viruses and hoaxes.
Graphics of the above top ten virus chart are available here.
More information about safe computing, including anti-hoax policies.
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About Sophos
Sophos enables enterprises all over the world to secure and control their IT infrastructure. Sophos's network access control, endpoint, web and email solutions simplify security to provide integrated defenses against malware, spyware, intrusions, unwanted applications, spam, policy abuse, data leakage and compliance drift. With over 20 years of experience, Sophos protects over 100 million users in nearly 150 countries with its reliably engineered security
solutions and services. Recognized for its high level of customer satisfaction and powerful yet easy-to-use solutions, Sophos has received many industry awards, as well as positive reviews and certifications.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com
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