News
Magistr Remains Atop Virus List
- By Scott Bekker
- 07/11/2001
The Magistr-A virus is still hitting the enterprise hard.
Sophos recently released its top 10 virus list for June, based on customer reports to its antivirus center.
"June's virus chart is topped by the highly destructive Magistr worm. This worm has been dominating the top 10 for the last three months. It seems that the simple message -- 'Don't open unsolicited attachments' -- has not yet been hammered home," said David Hughes, U.S. president for Sophos Anti-Virus.
Magistr-A, a Win32 worm, accounted for 22.2 percent of reports to the antivirus vendor in June. It was one of six Win32 viruses on the Sophos top 10 list for June.
The month also saw three Visual Basic scripts, including VBSWG-X or Homepage. Homepage was third on the list, accounting for 9.6 percent of reports.
"The highly publicized Homepage virus is also continuing to infect many systems. It seems computer users are still ignoring warnings and have neglected to update their antivirus protection," Hughes said.
The Apology virus, which prevents infected users from reaching the Web sites of many antivirus vendors, returned to the top 10 in June. It was the fourth most commonly reported virus at 7.4 percent.
Other viruses in the top 10 for June were BadTrans, Hybris, the Keylog Trojan, FunLove, Navidad, Kakworm and Mawanella.
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.