Month: September 2004

The IT security firm notes that the Zafi-B virus continues to wreak havoc on global email. “Although we have seen a small, 10 per cent decline in reports of Zafi-B since last month, this email-aware worm doesn’t look like it’s going to fade into obscurity anytime soon,” said Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos. “Protection against Zafi-B has been available for a couple of months now, and computer users need to get into the habit of updating their systems in a much more timely manner, or this nuisance will continue to dominate reports.”

In spite of the arrest of the Netsky virus author, a number of variants are still affecting businesses, and Netsky.P was number two in Sophos’s top 10 chart in August. Rounding off Sophos’s top 10 list are four more variants of the Netsky virus, the MyDoom-O, Bagle-AA and Lovgate-V. Despite more than 1,200 new viruses being detected in August, not one has made it into the chart this month.

In fact, the entire top 10 is made up of viruses which have been doing the rounds for weeks, if not months,” said Theriault.

August was a particularly bad month for virus attacks. Sophos analysed and protected against 1,230 viruses in the month, which the company says “is the highest number of new viruses seen in one single month since December 2001.”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/02/virus_life/

In their virus reports for August, software and Internet security companies said that viruses such as Netsky, Zafi and MyDoom, together with their variants, continued to dominate the charts.

“Although we have seen a small, 10 percent, decline in reports of Zafi-B since last month, this email-aware worm doesn’t look like it’s going to fade into obscurity anytime soon,” said Carole Theriault, security consultant at antivirus firm Sophos. “Protection against Zafi-B has been available for a couple of months now, and computer users need to get into the habit of updating their systems in a much more timely manner, or this nuisance will continue to dominate reports.”

Email security outsourcing firm MessageLabs said the ratio of viruses to emails passing through its servers was 1 in 14 — about the same as for July. The rate for June was one in 11.

Spam interceptions meanwhile spiralled to 100 million for August, accounting for 70 percent of all email flowing through the company’s servers. Mark Sunner, chief technical officer at MessageLabs, said the trend for viruses to be linked to spam had continued. July and August were relatively quiet for viruses, suggesting that September will be more active.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39165257,00.htm

Spam has accounted for 38 percent of the 31 billion emails sent each day in North America in 2004, up from 24 percent in 2002, the market researcher said.

Improved content filtering and anti-spam tools will help fight the problem, as will the growing use of alternative communications means, such as video conferencing and instant messaging software.

The ever-increasing intrusion by spam is forcing users and IT staff to spend extra time and energy to identify and delete such spurious email, which can be entry points for viruses, worms and offensive content.

Email is still the most preferred form of communication — business or otherwise — over the Internet.

According to IDC, the volume of email sent annually worldwide exceeded one exabyte, or one billion gigabytes, for the first time last year. IDC researcher Mark Levitt said the biggest challenge is to use the lessons learned so far and the investments made to help screen all inbound and outbound emails without compromising worker efficiency, corporate governance and regulatory compliance requirements.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/networks/0,39020345,39165256,00.htm