By John Leyden for The
Register
This article has been reproduced from The Register, with
permission.
Rather than creating new viral strains, the bad guys are
churning out multiple new variants of popular backdoor programs
such as Agobot, SdBOt, various Trojan downloaders and the like.
Anti-virus firm F-Secure notes that many of the malware families
have spawned more than 700 variants. Each time hackers add new
components to readily available malware code a new variant is
created. The trend is showing no signs of slowing down.
September's 1,233 new viruses was followed by a record high of
1,685 viruses in October. Nearly two thirds of the viruses reported
to Sophos during the month were versions of the Mytob worm, with
the new Mytob-GH and Mytob-EX variants having made a significant
impact. One in 60 emails (1.66 per cent), circulating in October
were viral, according to Sophos.
Despite all this new activity, NetSky-P, the worm written by
convicted German virus author Sven Jaschan, continues to head up
Sophos's top ten chart twenty months after it was first detected.
Mytob-GH, which first appeared on 16 October 2005, is already in
second place and showing no sign of abating. October's chart
consists of only three virus families NetSky, MyTob and
Zafi, indicating that virus writers are continuing to create
variants of established threats, which prove most effective for
financial gain.
"There are six variants of the Mytob worm in the October chart,
half of which are new entries," said Carole Theriault, senior
security consultant at Sophos. "The creators of Mytob appear to be
a gang of virus writers called Hellbot. By having several gang
members they can easily issue several different variants in a short
space of time."
October top ten virus chart, as compiled by Sophos:
NetSky-P Mytob-GH (new entry) Mytob-EX (new entry) Mytob-AS
Mytob-BE Zafi-D NetSky-D Mytob-C Zafi-B (re-entry) Mytob-ER (new
entry)
© The Register
2005
