The first month of 2002 may well have been quiet one in comparison to the last six months, but total infections for the month were still higher than those for January 2001, according to Steven Sundermeier, product manager at computer security company Central Command.
The good news, however, is that infections for the first month of this year were down by almost a half when compared to December 2001.
At the top of the list for January is the recently discovered MyParty worm, accounting for more than 20% of all reports received by Central Command. The MyParty worm disguises itself as a legitimate Yahoo Web page and spreads itself through the contacts found in Outlook Express.
BadTrans, SirCam and Nimda remained significant threats in the past month, together accounting for more than 45% of all infections reported for the month. Positions five to 12 of the Central Command`s "Dirty Dozen" list for January were occupied by Magstr.A, Magstr.B, Funlove, Hybris, Goner, Nimda.E, Win95.CIH and Win32.Gokar.A respectively.
MyParty also features high on the Symantec Security Response new threats list, along with Backdoor.DSNX, W32.Porma, W32.Hunch and W32.Sysnom. Symantec`s overall list of virus threats is still topped by Goner, with Badtrans, Nimda, SirCam and Hybris taking up the remaining four places in the top five. This list is not specific to January 2002 but includes all threats on an ongoing basis.
Sundermeier says the company is expecting the "number of confirmed viruses over the coming year to increase. The good news here is that total infection reports were down 43% from last month. The bad news is that they were still up over 25% from January 2001."
He notes that among the interesting viruses for January 2002 is Led, a mass-mailing Internet worm appearing as, among other things, a "Yo momma joke generator" and Worm/MyParty.C, a slight variation of Worm/MyParty carrying the renamed attachment, "myparty.photos.yahoo.com".
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