Lots Of Mytob, But Netsky Still Tops
Just as millions of people traveled on vacation in August, so did the Mytob worm variants to PCs worldwide.
More than half the reported viruses in August were from the Mytob family, a Sophos list of that month's incidents reports. The similar Zotob worm, which caused problems for major media outlets and airports in the United States, did not make as much impact as overheated TV reports would have people believe.
"Mytob and Zotob may spread in different ways, but the source code is very similar," said Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos, on their web site. "Moreover, the Zotob author's nickname, Diabl0, appears in more than twenty of the Mytob variants, suggesting that they may have been created by the same person."
Diabl0 is in custody, though, as authorities in Morocco and Turkey arrested two people in connection with creating the Zotob worm. One of them, 18 year-old Farid Essebar arrested in Turkey, went by the Diabl0 moniker. Turkish authorities also arrested 16 more suspects in the case.
The Netsky worm, written by the convicted German creator of Sasser, was still the greatest pest for users in August. That worm and its variants are mass-mailers, and disguise themselves as any one of a number of executables or screensaver files.
As always, security firms caution users to keep their antivirus signature files and engines up to date.
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