Virus watch: The top ten viruses for June

NEWS The Magistr virus, which has dominated the virus charts for the past three months, headed up the Sophos top ten list again in June. The polymorphic virus, which comes with its own SMTP handler so it can mass mail itself out from any email client, is still a threat to hard drives and network drives. A new entrant this month is password-stealing Keylog, which gets dropped via the BadTrans variant as part of its infected attachment being executed. Peter Cooper, technical support manager at Sophos said the anti-virus company has reported several incidents of Keylog at its email gateway. When activated, the code logs a user's keystrokes, including passwords, and sends them to a predetermined address. Cooper added: "If a virus writer gets hold of the Keylog program its possible to configure it slightly so passwords get sent to them instead of to the original author." The Sophos list below highlights the most frequently occurring viruses for June 2001 (percentages represent each virus's share of total virus reports): 1. W32/ Magistr-A 22.2% (Magistr)
2. W32/BadTrans-A 10.9% (BadTrans)
3. VBS/VBSWG-X 9.6% (Homepage)
4. W32/Apology-B 7.4% (Apology variant)
5. W32/Hybris-B 6.3% (Hybris variant)
6. Troj/Keylog-C 4.6% (Keylog variant)
7. W32/Flcss 2.8% (FunLove)
8. W32/Navidad-B 2.6% (Navidad variant)
=9.VBS/Kakworm 2.2% (Kakworm)
=9.VBS/VBSWG-Z 2.2% (Mawanella) For related news see:
Virus alert: New worm rises stateside
http://www.silicon.com/a45309
Virus clampdown: Kournikova writer stands trial
http://www.silicon.com/a45207
Top ten viruses for May
http://www.silicon.com/a44839
Worm virus alert: Magistr ate your emails
http://www.silicon.com/a43259