W32 viruses top the charts

By Vivienne Fisher, GameSpot Europe, 5 July, 2002 07:58

NEWS

This year Windows 32 viruses have accounted for all the positions on the top 10 list, according to a virus occurrence summary. Last month, it was reported that computer viruses were proliferating faster than ever, according to British security company MessageLabs, which found that it had caught as many pests in the first half of 2002 as it did in all of last year. Anti-virus vendor Sophos this week released its summary for the first six months of this year. All the viruses in its top 10 list were mass-mailing Windows 32 viruses, according to a statement from the company. Topping the list was Klez-H, followed by Badtrans-B, and then Elkern-C. Sircam made it in as number seven on the list, with Nimda coming in at as the tenth most prolific virus so far this year. Rob Forsyth, director of sales at Sophos, said its virus activity summary was based on calls which were logged by its seven call centres around the world. Andrew Gordon, managed services architect at anti-virus software vendor Trend Micro, said his company was definitely seeing more Windows 32 viruses. He attributed this to the fact there are so many freely available Win32 virus tools. "We're very concerned about the hybriad threat," Gordon said. He used the examples of when infection is via an infected Web site, adding that a very big focus at the moment was the protection of Web entry point and Web portals. Allan Bell, marketing director for security vendor Network Associates, sees the issue being the increasing complexity of viruses. "[They're] getting more complicated and presenting more threats to the organisation by using multiple techniques to proliferate," Bell said. "What that means is an organisation can't rely on a single point of defence." Bell believes the trend will be more viruses appearing in new forms. "We've already seen the ability for viruses to be embedded in data files," he said, adding that it meant organisations could no longer just scan a limited number of file types.

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