Viruses
Monday 4th September, 2006 12:31 Comments: 0
Sophos has revealed the most prevalent malware threats and hoaxes causing problems for computer users around the world during August 2006. The report 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.
"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.
I suspect it's a bit of both, but the older ones consumed bandwidth and kept fairly quiet that they were on your PC. The type of people that don't update their virus definitions are probably the ones on slow broadband connections that don't realise that their slow web browsing is caused by a virus using up spare bandwidth. Many places, even Microsoft, are telling users that many of the new trojans are actually variations of old ones that can be detected with current virus definitions (although the latest one was initially only detected by Symantec, AVG, Kaspersky, BitDefender, NOD32, Norman and a few other smaller solutions, the big players like Sophos, McAfee, Microsoft, Panda, Avast, ClamAV, F-Prot and a few smaller ones failed to detect the new variant), but the types of users that are vulnerable are probably the same types that don't keep their anti virus software updated either.
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.
"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.
I suspect it's a bit of both, but the older ones consumed bandwidth and kept fairly quiet that they were on your PC. The type of people that don't update their virus definitions are probably the ones on slow broadband connections that don't realise that their slow web browsing is caused by a virus using up spare bandwidth. Many places, even Microsoft, are telling users that many of the new trojans are actually variations of old ones that can be detected with current virus definitions (although the latest one was initially only detected by Symantec, AVG, Kaspersky, BitDefender, NOD32, Norman and a few other smaller solutions, the big players like Sophos, McAfee, Microsoft, Panda, Avast, ClamAV, F-Prot and a few smaller ones failed to detect the new variant), but the types of users that are vulnerable are probably the same types that don't keep their anti virus software updated either.