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June Evil Top Ten from BitDefender

June Evil Top Ten from BitDefender
BitDefender, a leading provider of security related software and services today released its monthly listing of the top ten viruses reported for June 2003. The report, denominated the "Evil Top Ten", is based on the number of virus occurrences confirmed through BitDefender Response Team tracking.

Last period has certainly been captivating in every aspect related to virus evolution and positioning.

Apparently built on the saying "The king is dead, long live the king!", this new trend in virus making went beyond some of the wildest expectations most antivirus analysts would have stated for this period.



This certainly proved to be quite an interesting month due to the outburst of chain-virus, particularly Sobig and BugBear signed malware that did their best to make antivirus solutions worth their pay.

Let's take a look at so far considered the most lashing threat of the year: BugBear.B, belonging to buggy bears family. Incredibly interesting structure for this evil fellow: if specialists regarded the A variant as dangerous, there was and still is a lot to say about BugBear.B. Attacking systems in almost every possible way, stealing passwords and infecting files, this virus has a keen eye for corporate environment, especially financial institutions; thousands of computers are considered to get infected by BugBear.B and that is just a temporary estimation. This is dirty trick indeed, considering that an attack of this magnitude on a bank can cause million dollars damage in very little time.

We all were rather familiar to the idea of virus families, but Sobig series seems to be a more interesting issue. The Sobig saga was beginning on January 11th, with first variant - Sobig.A - high spreading mass mailer that also checked network shares. The silence lasted for only 4 months. On May 18th we assisted to the rise of Sobig.B, in its entire commonly accepted name - Sobig.B, the virus formerly known as Palyh. Still high spreading, a little bit more dangerous than Big Brother Sobig.A. And then the show began: the most interesting feature of last Sobig versions is the payload, that proclaims deactivation of viral activity within a date set by creator, which by the way is not apparently very patient with its offspring development: Sobig.B was put to sleep on May 31st...And then surprise, surprise: : the same May 31st specialists confirmed Sobig.B legacy being passed to its rightful heir, named Sobig.C, even more threatening than its predecessors... Offer available only for about a week... By now we arrived to the E version of this evil worm, but the audience rates have considerably diminished. D and E variants were not included in this evil top because of the short period since their outbreak that did not give time for a "proper" spreading level...

Well, that is probably to be discussed in our July issue.
Until then, I prefer to keep you still curious and perfectly protected.

Note: BitDefender users were protected since the very beginning against the threats described above. Moreover, BitDefender experts were the first to release antidote tools, freely available on the Internet.

Commercial versions of BitDefender start from USD 29.99 and are available for 30-days free evaluation from www.bitdefender.com.


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