SirCam haunts dim-witted users

SirCam is still the most infectious computer virus on the Internet. Four months after it was first released it continues to haunt users.

The privacy-threatening, bandwidth-stealing worm headed the monthly chart of virus reports compiled by antivirus vendor Sophos and accounted for 21.7 per cent of calls to its support centre in October. It was followed by Nimda-A (17.8 per cent), September's chart topper, and the Magistr-B (16.1 per cent).

Statistics on viruses blocked by MessageLabs, a managed service provider that scans its users email for malicious code, tell a similar story.

During the last four weeks MessageLabs blocked 69,738 emails containing SirCam, down on 143,949 stopped during September. Magistr-A, with 17,202 infection bearing emails stopped, was a long way back in second place.

There was concern during this month that SirCam had the potential to wipe infected users hard discs (something that failed to happen thanks to lame coding). If this doesn't persuade people to get disinfected, what will?

Only the replacement of infected PCs or enforced disconnection from the Internet by their ISPs will curtail the spread in the case of some lunk heads. ®

Top ten viruses reported to Sophos in October

1. 
   
2. Sircam
   
3. Nimda-A
   
4. Magistr-B
   
5. Magistr-A
   
6. Hybris-B
   
7. Kakworm
   
8. Sadmind (Unix worm)
   
9. Apology-B
   
10. Verona-B
    
11. Haptime-A
    

External links

Latest monthly stats from MessageLabs

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