Top ten viruses in March: Sophos

Anti-virus vendor, Sophos has revealed the top ten viruses wreaking havok for businesses and indiviuals alike in March.

According to the report the trojan horse, Clagger-I, penetrated the top ten list for the second time in a month. First seen at the start of march, the virus was now being aggressively distributed by its creator using spam technology.

This month, Clagger-I was disguised as an email from PayPal, an online payments service used by eBay users.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos said the Clagger-I demonstrates that cyber criminals were continually developing new multi-pronged attacks and mass spamming campaigns to generate illegitimate income.

The other two re-entries this month, MyDoom-AJ in fourth position and Mytob-Z at tenth, were both first detected in April 2005. These worm variants have been absent from the top ten for several months, but their resurgence during the month illustrated their ongoing potential to cause damage.

Nyxem-D, otherwise known as the Kama Sutra worm - which uses a variety of pornographic disguises in an attempt to spread and disable security software - made number three during the month.

Despite the widespread publicity this worm has received since its detection in January, it continued to plague and fool users, according to Sophos. However, this worm has failed to topple old-timers Netsky-P and this month's worst offender, Zafi-B.

Sophos's research shows that 0.9 percent or one in 108 emails is viral.

The top ten malware in March 2006 were as follows:

1. Zafi-B 17.3 percent

2. Netsky-P 15.3 percent

3. Nyxem-D 7.9 percent

4. MyDoom-AJ 4.1 percent Re-entry

5. Mytob-EX 3.6 percent

6. Clagger-I 3.4 percent New entry

7. Mytob-BE 3.1 percent

8. Netsky-D 3.0 percent

9. Mytob-FO 3.0 percent

10. Mytob-Z 2.8 percent Re-entry

Others 36.5 percent.