Top Ten Viruses Reported to Sophos in July 2004

Sophos Press Release 03/08/04

Largest number of new viruses recorded since December 2001

Sophos, a world leader in protecting businesses against spam and viruses, has published a report revealing the top ten viruses and hoaxes causing problems for businesses around the world.

The report shows that the Hungarian Zafi worm continues to dominate the virus chart, accounting for more than half of all viruses spotted by Sophos's global network of monitoring stations. The number of new viruses being written is on the increase too, with Sophos identifying a total of 1,157 brand new viruses during the month - the highest figure since December 2001.

The top ten viruses in July 2004 were as follows:

1 W32/Zafi-B 59.2%
2 W32/Netsky-P 15.8%
3 W32/Netsky-D 4.5%
4 W32/Bagle-AA 3.3%
5= W32/Netsky-Z 2.9%
5= W32/Netsky-B 2.9%
7 W32/Netsky-Q 1.9%
8 W32/MyDoom-O 1.7%
9 W32/Mimail-C 1.5%
10 W32/Bagle-Zip 0.9%

"The Zafi worm, which can arrive in several different languages, won't be disappearing anytime soon. There are so many copies of Zafi-B flying around and trying to break through companies' defences," said Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos. "It is vital that computer users around the world are protected fully to ensure worms like these don't hang around like a bad smell."

"MyDoom-O, first seen on 26 July, has also been spreading successfully, needing only a few days to burst into the Sophos chart of top ten viruses. It used an unprecedented technique of infecting computers, scooping up email addresses and polling search engines for more addresses to bombard. MyDoom-O hit Google particularly hard, and millions of users were unable to access the search engine," continued Theriault.

Sophos analysed and protected against 1,157 new viruses in July. The total number of viruses Sophos now protects against is 92,645. Sophos figures show that over 9% of emails circulating during the month of July were viral.

"This is the first time since December 2001 that Sophos has issued protection for so many threats. Unfortunately, it looks like the number of new viruses we see each month is growing rather than shrinking. When compared to the same period last year, we have issued protection for 532 more viruses this month," said Theriault.

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