Sober-I Hits Hard, Nears Nov. Title Spot

The Netsky-P worm finally has some competition when it comes to the worst

bugs plaguing the Internet.

Sober.I, a mass-mailing variant of the Sober family of worms, placed high

on several lists of the top viruses for November. Even though the bug

wasn’t even discovered in the Wild until Nov. 19, it still had plenty of

time to make it’s mark.

”Arguably the only major virus outbreak of the fall season, Sober-I had

an immediate impact,” says Steve Sundermeier, vice president of products

and services at Central Command, an anti-virus and anti-spam company

based in Medina, Ohio. ”Even though Sober-I was first discovered on the

nineteenth, it had already closed in on Netsky.P, coming in second.”

One in 18 emails circulating in the month of November contained a virus,

according to a report from Sophos, Inc., an anti-virus and anti-spam

company based in Lynnfield, Mass.

Some of the anti-virus vendors release rankings of the worst viruses for

the past month. Rarely do they agree completely, but they offer a view of

what viruses, worms and Trojans are circling the Internet and causing the

most trouble.

Central Command’s list consists of Netsky-P, which accounts for 26.3

percent of all malware in the Wild; Sober-I at 17.5 percent; Bagle-AT at

11.6 percent, Bagle-AP at 9.1 percent and Zafi-B at 6.9 percent.

Sophos lists their top viruses as: Netsky-P with 24.2 percent; Sober-I

with 20.4 percent; Zafi-B at 17.9 percent; Bagle-AU with 11 percent and

Netsky-D with 4.4 percent.

MessageLabs, Inc., a managed email security company based in New York,

lists their top malware as: MyDoom-A, Dumaru-A, Swen-A, Sobig-F and

Mimail-J.

”Sober-I and Bagle-AU proved to be a nuisance to many businesses and

consumers,” says Gregg Mastoras, senior security analyst at Sophos.

”Sober-I spreads via email and uses a variety of subject lines and

message texts, many of which allude to important security or messaging

information.

”Netsky-P and Zafi-B also claim top spots even though protection against

them was made available as soon as they were first detected. If users

took precautionary measures, these earlier threats wouldn’t be an issue

any longer,” adds Mastoras.

Sophos analysts report that they found 1,379 new viruses in November.

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