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02 Jul 2001

Top ten viruses reported to Sophos in June 2001

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 June 2001, the chart is as follows, with the most frequently occurring virus at number one:

Position Last
month
Malware Percentage of reports
12W32/Magistr-A
   22.2%
24W32/Badtrans-A
   10.9%
31VBS/VBSWG-X
   9.6%
45W32/Apology-B
   7.4%
53W32/Hybris-B
   6.3%
6NewTroj/Keylog-C
   4.6%
79=W32/Flcss
   2.8%
8Re-entryW32/Navidad-B
   2.6%
9=6VBS/Kakworm
   2.2%
9=7VBS/VBSWG-Z
   2.2%
Others29.2%

"June's virus chart is topped by the highly destructive Magistr worm. This worm has been dominating the top ten for the last three months. It seems that the simple message - don't open unsolicited attachments - has not yet hammered home," said Peter Cooper, UK support manager, Sophos Anti-Virus. "What's more, the highly publicised Homepage worm is also continuing to infect many people. It seems computer users are still ignoring warnings and have neglected to update their anti-virus protection.

June also saw the resurgence of the Apology-B virus which prevents infected users from reaching the websites of many anti-virus vendors, thus preventing them downloading protection. Sophos reminds that users who regularly update their anti-virus software will be protected from all known viruses.

794 new viruses were discovered and protected against by Sophos Anti-Virus during June 2001.

The total number of viruses Sophos now detects and protects against is 64,894

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.

About Sophos

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 complete security solutions that are simple to deploy, manage, and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers.

Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.