1 September 2006
Top ten malware threats and hoaxes reported to Sophos in August 2006
Sophos, a world leader in protecting businesses against viruses, spyware and spam, has revealed the most prevalent malware threats and hoaxes causing problems for computer users around the world during August 2006.
The report, compiled from Sophos's global network of monitoring
stations, reveals little movement, with last month's four most
prevalent pieces of malware retaining their positions. There are no
new entries in August's chart and only one re-entry, the Mytob-E
worm which last appeared in the chart in May 2005. This month's top
two - Netsky-P and Mytob-AS - were also the most common in August
2005.
Sophos maintains that a large number of computers connected
to the internet are simply not protected against threats, which
suggests that education on IT security is not making a global
impact. Protection against Netsky-P has been available for more
than two years, yet it remains the most widespread email worm.
Just one in 278 (0.4 percent) emails are now viral infected, a
significant decrease to August 2005 when one in every 50 emails
circulating were viral. However, Sophos identified 1,998 new
threats in August, bringing the total number of malware protected against
to 186,665. The majority of the new threats (71.8 percent) were
Trojan horses, which, in most cases, are specifically targeted at
particular groups of people and do not spread on their own.
The top ten list of malware in August 2006 reads as follows:
"It is certainly frustrating that such easily beaten threats are
still plaguing our email highways - is it a simple case that people
who are infected don't know or don't care?" explained Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos. "While the media regularly reports on the dangers of cyber crime, informing the public how to defend their PCs, perhaps some users just don't think it could happen to them. Wake up - it can. If you use the internet and don't have proper security measures in place, you are not only
endangering your data, you are keeping nasty old timers like Mytob and Netsky worms alive and kicking."
Top ten hoaxes and chain letters in August 2006 were as follows:
Graphics of the above top ten virus chart are available.
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About Sophos
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.
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