Sobig family dominates this month's chart
This is the latest in a series of monthly charts counting down
the ten most frequently occurring viruses and hoaxes as compiled by
Sophos, a global leader in anti-virus protection for
businesses.
For July 2003, the chart is as follows, with the most frequently
occurring virus at number one:
"Forget the Osbournes or the Addams Family - the Sobig family of
computer worms, accounting for more than half of all virus reports,
is most likely to strike fear into the hearts of IT
administrators," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant
for Sophos Anti-Virus. "The Sobig worms, and some of the other top
ten viruses, don't just spread by email. They use a variety of
means. This underlines the importance of keeping anti-virus
protection up to date at all entry points to the company
network."
Sophos detected 625 new viruses, worms and Trojan horses in
July. The total number it now protects against is 83,499.
The top ten hoaxes reported to Sophos during July 2003 are as
follows:
"An old chain letter promising that Bill Gates will share his
personal fortune with anyone who forwards the email onto friends
and family has stormed to the top of the chart in July," said
Cluley. "Chain letters and hoaxes waste valuable email bandwidth
and can scare people into panicking about non-existent virus
threats."
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 virus top ten chart are available here.
More information about safe computing,
including anti-hoax policies.
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.