Sober topples Zafi in virus top 10
The bilingual World Cup-themed worm took top spot in Sophos's list of most prevalent viruses last month.
IT managers, in their daily firefight against viruses, saw a massive spike in the instances of the Sober offshoot, as it displaced Zafi.D atop the "least wanted" list provided by the British antivirus company. The mass-mailing worm, which is carried by e-mails in both English and German, is known as Sober.N by Sophos, but has also been variously named Sober.P, Sober.O and Sober.S by other security providers.
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"Sober.N stormed to the top of the chart in early May, making it one of the biggest outbreaks so far this year," Carole Theriault, a security consultant at Sophos, said in a statement on Wednesday. "This manipulative e-mail worm spread quickly, using social engineering tricks, such as offering free World Cup tickets, to entice recipients into opening the infected attachment."
In total, Sober-N accounted for 43.8 percent of all reported viruses, Sophos said. The e-mails typically purported to offer tickets for soccer's Fifa World Cup 2006, or had subject lines referring to passwords or a booking confirmation.
Recent arrival on the virus landscape Mytob (Z and AZ variants) also made its presence felt.
The full top 10 list for May looks like this.
1 Sober.N 43.8 percent (new entry)
2 Zafi.D 14.5 percent
3 Netsky.P 13.1 percent
4 Netsky.D 3.1 percent
5 Zafi.B 2.0 percent
6 Mytob.AZ 1.6 percent (new entry)
7 Mytob.Z 1.5 percent
7 Netsky.Z 1.5 percent
7 Mytob.E 1.5 percent
10 Netsky.N 1.4 percent
Others: 16.0 percent.
Will Sturgeon of Silicon.com reported from London.