BadTrans-B has eclipsed SirCam to become the most common email-borne virus on the Internet.

MessageLabs, a managed service provider which scans its users email for viruses, blocked 170,510 emails containing BadTrans-B (http://www.messagelabs.com/viruseye/default.asp?by=month), in the last four weeks.

SirCam was the next most common virus -it was filtered out by MessageLabs 52,179 times. Nimda.E, number eight in the list and the most damaging virus to corporate systems, was blocked 1,631 times. Email is only one of the ways that Nimda spreads, so the worm was more common than these figures suggest.

MessageLabs has produced a detailed analysis of the outbreak of BadTrans-B (http://www.messagelabs.com/viruseye/report.asp?id=86) which suggests the rates of infection tailing off. The originating domain name of infected emails had led MessageLabs to say three in five of the infected emails it blocked came from home users. The outbreak of the worm was felt across the world but the UK was hit particularly badly.

MessageLabs' list considers the actual number of viruses blocked during a month, unlike the monthly study by anti-virus vendor Sophos, which looks at calls to its support centres.

Sophos, as of November 27, closed the book on the worst viruses of 2001 (http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/pressrel/uk/20011127yeartopten.html) and concluded Nimda and SirCam will account for 50 per cent of the reports it will receive this year. BadTrans-B barely scraped into the Sophos list at number nine.
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Top ten viruses blocked by MessageLabs in November

• BadTrans-B
  
• SirCam
  
• Magistr-B (Magistr variant)
  
• Magistr-A
  
• Aliz-B
  
• Hybris-B (Hybris variant)
  
• Klez-B
  
• LoveLetter.A
  
• Nimda-E
  
• BadTrans-A
  
• Kak.A
  
  
  

External Links

Latest monthly stats from MessageLabs (http://www.messagelabs.com/viruseye/default.asp?by=month)

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