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Are virus writers resting on their laurels?
November spawned a monster already, but October was same old, same old on the threat front...

By Jo Best

Published: Monday 03 November 2003

Despite a new virus, Mimail.C, hitting inboxes worldwide over the last few days, the virus chart, detailing the most prevalent viruses during October shows very little variation in the worms which have been plaguing systems for the past few weeks.

In the aftermath of the virus double whammy that was Sobig and Blaster that wreaked havoc on email systems during the late summer, analysts and antivirus experts were primed for another outbreak on the same scale, which has so far failed to materialise, leaving October's virus chart spilling over with old 'favourites'.

The chart shows the top 10 viruses reported to antivirus company Sophos over the month of October – with the top three showing no change from September.

The malware top two masquerade as Microsoft security updates, taking advantage of users' fears to get them to open an attachment containing a virus by dressing it up as a new patch from the software giant.

The only new entry this month is a virus named CoreFloo.C. Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos described the newbie in a statement as "a Trojan which allows a remote intruder to access and control a computer via Internet Relay Chat (IRC)", adding "this is the first time this year that a Trojan has made it into the top 10 which is dominated by Windows 32 viruses".

October's full chart:
(Figures in brackets show share of total reports accounted for by each virus)
1. Gibe.F 22.7 per cent
2. Dumaru.A 13.6 per cent
3. Mimail.A 12.4 per cent
4. Sobig.F 9.0 per cent
5. Klez.H 4.4 per cent
6. Nachi.A 4.3 per cent
7. Blaster.A 2.4 per cent
8. CoreFloo.C 2.1 per cent
9. Bugbear.B 1.6 per cent
10. Rox.A 1.0 per cent
Others 26.5 per cent