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 February 2002, the chart is as follows, with the most
frequently occurring virus at number one:
"The MyParty
worm duped computer users by pretending to be a link to a website
containing snaps of groovy partygoers. But not everything that ends
in dot com is a web address, it can also be an executable file,"
said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos
Anti-Virus. "It was a simple psychological trick and many people
fell for it. The message is simple: stop double-clicking on
unsolicited email attachments, even if they appear to come from
someone you know."
February also saw the emergence of Coolnow - a worm that
infected users of MSN Messenger. Although it did not break into the
top ten, Coolnow continues to infect PCs and therefore offers a
reminder that virus writers are constantly using new platforms to
spread their malicious code.
739 new viruses were discovered and protected against by Sophos
Anti-Virus during February 2002.
The total number of viruses Sophos now detects and protects
against is 72,569.
More information
about MyParty.
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.