Sophos, a world leader in protecting businesses against spam and
viruses, has published a report revealing the top ten viruses and
hoaxes causing problems for businesses around the world during the
month of January 2005.
The report, compiled from Sophos's global network of monitoring
stations, shows that Zafi-D, which appeared at the end of 2004,
maintains its position at the top of the chart for a second
consecutive month.
The top ten viruses in January 2005 were as follows:
"Zafi-D tops the chart for the second consecutive month,
accounting for nearly half of all reports in January. It's
disturbing that this worm, which spreads under the guise of a
Christmas greeting, is continuing to cause so much trouble into the
new year," said Graham
Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "Recipients are
probably opening these mails thinking they have received belated
Christmas cheer from a friend or colleague, but if businesses want
this threat and others to stop plaguing them, they should protect
their gateway with automatically updated virus protection"
"The second most commonly encountered virus in January -
Netsky-P - is still causing considerable nuisance. Protection
against this worm has been available since March 2004, but
unfortunately it seems there will always be computers connected to
the internet which are poorly defended enabling the worm to
continue to spread, attempting to infect every other Windows PC it
happens upon," continued Cluley.
Sophos analysed and protected against 1,329 new viruses in
January. The total number of viruses Sophos now protects against is
99,829. Sophos research shows that over 4.3%, or one in 23 emails,
circulating during the month of January were viral. This figure is
a little lower than last month when 1 in 18 emails were viral.
The top ten hoaxes reported to Sophos during January were as
follows:
"Two new entries to the hoax chart this month come in the form
of emails which relate to the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster,"
continued Cluley. "The 'unidentified tsunami boy' chain letter was
a genuine cry for help as well-intented internet users forwarded
the picture of a boy caught up in the disaster. The 'letter from
tsunami victim' is a malicious scam similar to the well-known
Nigerian Letter scams designed to extort money from email users.
The best advice is to simply delete all unsolicited mail."
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 above top ten virus chart are available here.
More information about safe
computing, including anti-hoax policies.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.