Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global network of virus and
spam analysis centres, have warned users that the W32/Sober-N worm
has now been reported attempting to break into computer systems in
over 40 different countries, and shows no signs of slowing
down.
Since the worm first
emerged on Monday it has dominated the chart of most commonly
encountered viruses. At the time of writing it is accounting for
79.29% of all viruses seen by Sophos's monitoring stations around
the world. Sophos experts calculate that the worm is now accounting
for an astonishing 4.5% of all email (legitimate or otherwise) sent
across the internet.
"1 in every 22 emails sent across the internet is currently
infected by the Sober-N worm - making this one of the biggest virus
outbreaks of the year," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "All internet users must secure
their systems with up-to-date anti-virus software and ensure that
they never open unsolicited email attachments. No-one should be
fooled into thinking that email viruses are a thing of the
past."
Sophos reports that the worm fooled users into opening its
dangerous email attachment by using a variety of tricks - including
using a number of different subject lines and message texts, and
sending itself in either German or English language depending on
what it suspected was the natural language of the recipient.
"In particular, this worm appears to have caused problems by
posing as an offer of free tickets for the soccer World Cup
tournament in Germany next year," continued Cluley. "Many people
found the prospect of free tickets to the prestigious sporting
event just too hard to resist."
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| A typical email sent by the Sober-N worm. |
Sophos recommends companies protect their email with a consolidated solution to thwart the virus and spam
threats and secure their desktops 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.