A report published by Sophos also indicates that the number of new viruses being written is increasing. Sophos says the number of new viruses detected in the first half of this year was 21% higher than the same period in 2003.
Holton says the top 10 worst threats compiled by BitDefender analysts for the year to date shows that the competition for the top spot on the list was between various versions of Netsky and Bagle. He says the Netsky strain is now composed of 30 variants and Bagle has 47.
Brett Myroff, CEO of local Sophos distributor Netxactics, says there has been a marked increase in the number of viruses this year. "We counted 1 100 new viruses or variations last month alone," he says.
A BitDefender report says a possible cause for the high rate of infections and the large number of viruses this year is the trend towards building more dangerous worm viruses that spread automatically, requiring no user participation. Myroff agrees that by far the largest proportion of virus attacks have been worms.
"A significant number of exploitable holes in MS Windows were left unpatched by a sizeable portion of the user base in the first half of 2004, leading to the Sasser epidemic, among other things," explains Holton.
Despite increased awareness about the dangers of opening file attachments and the emergence of worms like Sasser, BitDefender still found that mass mailer viruses outpaced other types of virus, with first place in the list of 2004`s worst viruses so far going to Netsky.P.
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