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| Sophos warns that users dazzled by the Christmas
lights may be blinded to the risks of malicious email
attachments. |
The impact of the W32/Zafi-D worm, which
disguised itself as an electronic Christmas card, has reduced from
its peak of 1 in every 10 emails earlier this week, to 1 in 30
in the last 24 hours according to reports from Sophos's global
network of monitoring stations.
Although still the most prevalent active virus, accounting for
54% of all virus reports in the last day, the Zafi-D worm is having
less of an impact as more computer users disinfected their PCs, and
woke up to the need to protect themselves with up-to-date
anti-virus software.
"Even though the number of infected emails it is generating is
reducing, we wouldn't be surprised to see the Zafi-D worm still
spreading successfully in the wild for months to come," said
Graham Cluley,
senior technology consultant. "The sad truth is that it seems there
will always be computers connected to the internet which are poorly
defended against threats, and they will continue to spread viruses
which attempt to infect the rest of us."
Sophos is warning users to remain vigilant of other viruses
which may use Christmas and holiday-related themes in an attempt to
fool users into opening them.
"There has been a long history of computer worms which have
taken advantage of the Christmas and New Year celebrations. Users
must not let down their guard - if the holiday season makes them
blind to the security risks then hackers and virus writers will
pounce," continued Cluley. "Every computer user should show caution
before opening unexpected email attachments at any time of the
year."
Sophos recommends companies protect their email gateways with a
consolidated solution to thwart the virus
and spam threats as well as secure their desktop and servers with
automatically updated anti-virus protection.
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.