August was a fairly quiet month on the Internet virus front, but cyberwars appear to be featuring more.
According to local Sophos distributor Netxactics, the threats listed in the August virus chart have had a much smaller impact and claimed fewer victims than the previous months.
Netxactics CEO Brett Myroff says Sophos` research shows that 1.99%, or one in 50 e-mails, circulating during the month of August were viral - a significant drop when compared to the May results of one in 38 e-mails. Myroff says this could be due to the fact that August is a popular holiday time for many people.
Kaspersky Labs adds that cyberwars are changing the face of Internet viruses.
"Some cyberwars are caused by competing groups of virus writers trying to remove malware written by other groups from infected machines; each group is striving to be the sole owner of any given zombie. And sometimes these groups hack each other`s sites or hackers from one country try to break into government servers in another country," says a Kaspersky statement.
Kaspersky says Netsky.q and Mytob.c have been fighting for first place in its ratings for several months.
"We are witnessing an ongoing struggle between these two families with 13 versions of Mytob and four versions of Netsky in the rankings. Although it seems Mytob is gaining the upper hand, a closer look shows that with four Mytobs and three Netskys in the top 10, neither worm is totally dominant."
The prevalence of the Netsky-P worm on Sophos` lists rose slightly in August, from 13.9% to 14.7%, but variants of the Mytob worm remain the dominant threat to computer users, accounting for 54% of all viruses reported to Sophos in August. In addition, research now suggests the Zotob group of viruses is also directly linked to Mytob.
"Mytob and Zotob may spread in different ways, but the source code is very similar," says Myroff.
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