Late entry MyDoom storms to the top of the chart
Sophos, a world leader in protecting businesses against spam and
viruses, has revealed the top ten viruses and hoaxes causing
problems for businesses around the world.
The report, which examines virus and hoax reports in the month
of January 2004, reveals two new entrants - the MyDoom and Bagle
worms - took the top two positions in the chart.
The top ten viruses in January 2004 were as follows:
"Two new entrants dominate January's chart, yet both were first
detected late in the month," said Graham Cluley, senior technology
consultant at Sophos. "The MyDoom worm - which launched a denial of
service attack on SCO's website and clogged up thousands of email
inboxes - only appeared on 26 January and accounted for one in four
reports."
"The Bagle worm was a shooting star. First detected halfway
through the month, it shot up the chart in only a short amount of
time," continued Cluley. "But - rather like the similarly named
Beagle Mars rover - Bagle's popularity was short-lived. It was
designed to fall dormant on 28 January."
Sophos analysed and protected against 608 new viruses in
January. The total number of viruses Sophos now protects against is
87,419.
The top ten hoaxes reported to Sophos during January are as
follows:
"The Hotmail hoax refuses to shift from top place in the chart,"
said Cluley. "Hoaxes and chain letters clog email servers and waste
valuable bandwidth - all companies are advised to implement an
anti-hoax policy."
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.