Sasser reigns supreme
p2pnet.net News:- There’s now a Top Ten of p2p downloads, so why not an E-bug Top Ten?
Why not indeed? – so Britain’s Sophos has filled the vacuum with a chart listing virus activity for first six months of 2004.
“Sasser claimed the top spot of the virus chart, in spite of the raging battle between the widespread Netsky and Bagle worms, which has wreaked havoc across the internet from mid-February,” says Sophos.
“This war produced six of the most damaging viruses of the year so far, with Netsky-P proving to be the most prevalent.”
The “good news for computer users,” says Sophos, “was the May arrest of Sven Jaschan, the German teenager who confessed to authoring both the Sasser and Netsky worms”.
Sasser-type e-worms are successful because Microsoft is “finding it tough to ensure computer users apply patches as soon as the flaws are discovered,” says Sophos’ Graham Cluley, continuing:
“Sasser may have taken top spot, but six of the biggest viruses of the last six months were all Netsky and Bagle variants – these caused a continued nuisance for PC users the world over as their authors entered into a very public game of virus writing one-upmanship.”
Sophos also points out the the increasing trend for virus writers to attempt to build “zombie armies” of “possessed PCs.” opening a backdoor into infected PCs so hackers can launch distributed denial of service attacks.
August 2nd, 2004 at 11:45 pm
What makes it sometimes confusing is that the antivirus companies – most notably Norton and mcafee – seem to compete with each other in naming viruses. So you often have had more than one name for the same virus.