This is the latest in a series of monthly charts counting down
the ten most frequently occurring viruses as compiled by Sophos, a
world leader in corporate anti-virus protection.
For May 2001, the chart is as follows, with the most frequently
occurring virus at number one:
"The Homepage
worm, which directs infected users to pornographic websites,
dominates the top ten list, closely followed by the highly
destructive Magistr
virus," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for
Sophos Anti-Virus. "System administrators should not only ensure
their company's anti-virus software is up-to-date but also
implement content blocking at their email gateway to prevent
unauthorised executable and Visual Basic Scripts from entering
their networks."
May also saw a politically motivated virus, the Mawanella worm, which
highlighted the plight of Muslim villagers in Sri Lanka. Sophos
reminds users that all viruses, even those claiming to have a moral
message, have an adverse effect on businesses. Not only are
man-hours lost whilst systems are disinfected but companies
inadvertently sending viruses to associates and customers are at
risk of seriously compromising their credibility.
920 new viruses were discovered and protected against by Sophos
Anti-Virus during May 2001.
The total number of viruses Sophos now detects and protects
against is 64100.
More information
about safe computing.
Graphics of the above Top Ten chart are available here.
Compiled by Sophos's technical support team, the top ten chart
is collated from calls to Sophos's 24 hour, 365 days a year
technical support line.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.