Sophos, a world leader in protecting businesses against viruses,
spyware and spam, has revealed the top ten malware threats of the
last 12 months, in its indepth report into the year's most pressing
security issues.
The 'Sophos Security Threat Report 2007' - which can be
downloaded here - was compiled by
the experts at SophosLabs™, and reveals that
although the proportion of infected email fell from 1 in 44 in 2005
to just 1 in 337 (0.3%) in 2006, there was nevertheless some
high-profile malware dropping into users' inboxes. Worms such as
Mytob, Netsky and Sober spread widely via email in 2006.
The top ten malware families of the year, reported at Sophos's
global network of monitoring stations, are as follows:
"The list of top ten malware families reveals that variants of
the Mytob worm continue to plague insufficiently protected users
around the globe. Mytob first emerged in March 2005, yet people are
still being infected by this email-aware worm," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "With thousands of different
variants of Mytob, many of which are hidden within bespoke
compression code, it is likely to continue to hit unprotected
computer users in 2007."
18-year-old Farid Essebar, a Russian-born resident of Morocco,
who used the online handle "Diabl0", was sentenced to
two years in jail in September for spreading the Zotob worm.
Evidence found within some Mytob
variants suggests that he was also involved in their
creation.
The Sophos security report also
unmasks the United States is the number one country for malware
hosting and spam-relaying.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.