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By Kate Hanaghan, 1 February 2002 12:45

NEWS BadtransII has demonstrated its staying power by holding onto the number one spot in last month's top ten viruses. And you can expect it to be there for some time, too. The nature of the worm means each time it is emailed by an unsuspecting user it creates a different subject line and name for the attachment. This makes it almost impossible to detect. Alex Shipp, senior anti-virus technologist at MessageLabs, said: "Users without protection have no defence. Things have got to the stage where these viruses (BadtransII and Sircam) will never die. And they are mostly kept alive by unprotected home users." The top 10 is based on figures from anti-virus software vendor Kaspersky. The list shows the percentage of total infections attributed to each malicious program. Although not quite as impressive as Badtrans, which accounted for 65.6 per cent of total infections last month, Sircam is holding on doggedly to the number two spot - with 11.2 per cent. Newcomer MyParty came in at number three with 4.1 per cent. However, this worm has a January cut off date and daily data from MessageLabs already shows it is dying a rapid death. Click here for the full list:
http://www.silicon.com/a50960