Lynnfield, MA - Sophos, a global leader in network security, has
published a report revealing the top ten viruses and hoaxes that
caused problems for businesses around the world during the month of
January 2005.
The report, compiled from SophosLabs, a global network of
research centers, showed that Zafi-D, which appeared at the end of
2004, maintained its position at the top of the chart for a second
consecutive month.
The top ten viruses in January 2005 were as follows:
"The Zafi-D worm managed to maintain the top position on the
chart for the second consecutive month, accounting for nearly half
of all reports in January 2005," said Gregg Mastoras, senior
security analyst at Sophos, Inc. "Despite the holiday season being
behind us, many continued to open the email perhaps thinking it was
a belated holiday greeting."
"Netsky-P was still a pest to many users in January despite the
fact that protection against this worm has been available since
March 2004," continued Mastoras. "Many organizations are probably
protected at this point but for those who are still getting hit,
they need to protect their gateway at all times with automatic
virus updates."
Sophos analyzed 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:
"There were two new entries to the hoax chart in January and
both centered on the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster," continued
Mastoras. "The 'unidentified tsunami boy' chain letter affected
email systems due to sympathetic internet users who forwarded a
picture of a young blonde-haired boy in a Thai hospital. The
'letter from tsunami victim' was nothing but a scam similar to the
well-known Nigerian Letter scams, which were designed to extort
money from email users. The best advice is to simply delete all
such email and/or not forward."
Other virus news
On January 28, 2005, Jeffrey Lee Parson, the teenage author of
the Blaster-B internet worm was sentenced to 18 months in prison
and 100 hours of community service by a US District Court. Parson's
worm, which launched an attack against Microsoft's website and
infected 48,000 computers caused an estimated $1.2 million in
damage when it spread in August 2003.
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.
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.