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The Internet threat alert status is currently normal. At present, no major epidemics or other serious incidents have been recorded by Kaspersky Lab’s monitoring service. Internet threat level: 1

Virus Top 20 for May 2008

Position Change in position Name Proactive Detection Flag Percentage
1. No Change 0 Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.q Trojan.generic 23.12
2. Up +1 Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.y Trojan.generic 9.70
3. Up +2 Email-Worm.Win32.Scano.gen Trojan.generic 9.63
4. Up +4 Email-Worm.Win32.Nyxem.e Trojan.generic 6.75
5. Down -3 Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.d Trojan.generic 6.27
6. Return Return Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.x Trojan.generic 4.44
7. Down -1 Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.aa Trojan.generic 3.74
8. Return Return Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.b Trojan.generic 3.26
9. Down -5 Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.gt Trojan.generic 2.75
10. Return Return Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.u Worm.P2P.generic 2.60
11. Up +6 Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.c Trojan.generic 2.40
12. No Change 0 Email-Worm.Win32.Scano.bn Trojan.generic 2.09
13. Return Return Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.r Trojan.generic 1.98
14. Up +4 Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.t Trojan.generic 1.94
15. Return Return Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.bi Trojan.generic 1.65
16. Down -5 Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.gen Trojan.generic 1.39
17. Down -4 Email-Worm.Win32.Mydoom.l Worm.P2P.generic 1.19
18. Return Return Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.t Worm.P2P.generic 1.08
19. Down -3 Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.c Trojan.generic 0.97
20. New! New! Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.cg Worm.P2P.generic 0.90
Other malicious programs 12.15

The May 2008 Email Top Twenty is a short one; this is explained by the well-known fact that virus writers take a break over the summer months. The complete absence of any epidemics in mail traffic, which is obvious from even a cursory glance at this month's rankings, bears this out.

In fact, the only significant change to the rankings was caused by the re-entry of a few worms which have been in circulation for several years now.

Trojan-Downloader programs such as Agent.ica, Agent.hsl, and Diehard that were active during the first four months of 2008 disappeared without trace in May.

The Warezov and Zhelatin worms have not reappeared since dropping out of the Top Twenty back in February. The authors have stopped sending out the executable components of the worms by email, confining themselves to distributing the code via links on infected websites.

This does mean that the threat posed by malicious code in email has declined. However, phishing and spam continue to pose very real threats and have the potential to create just as big a problem for the end user.

Other malicious programs made up a significant percentage (12.15%) of all malicious code found in mail traffic.

The Top Twenty countries which acted as sources of infected emails in May are shown below:


Position Change Country Percentage
1 No Change 0 USA 21.72
2 Up +5 Poland 13.18
3 Down -1 South Korea 7.88
4 Down -1 Spain 5.85
5 Down -1 China 5.15
6 No Change 0 France 4.07
7 Up +1 Germany 3.54
8 Down -1 Brazil 3.49
9 No Change 0 United Kingdom 2.83
10 Down -2 India 2.82
11 Down -1 Italy 2.66
12 Down -1 Isreal 1.80
13 No Change 0 Japan 1.66
14 Up +5 Canada 1.15
15 Up +2 The Netherlands 1.07
16 Down -1 Turkey 1.05
17 Down -1 Australia 1.03
18 Down -4 Argentina 1.02
19 Up +1 Russia 0.99
20 New! New! Austria 0.91
Other Countries 16.13


Summary

  • Moved up: Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.y, Email-Worm.Win32.Scano.gen, Email-Worm.Win32.Nyxem.e, Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.c, Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.t.
  • Moved down: Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.d, Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.aa, Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.gt, Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.gen, Email-Worm.Win32.Mydoom.l, Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.c.
  • Returned: Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.x, Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.b, Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.u, Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.r, Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.bi, Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.t, Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.cg.
  • No change: Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.q, Email-Worm.Win32.Scano.bn.

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Author

Alexander Gostev

Aleks has headed the Global Research and Analysis Team at Kaspersky Lab since 2008, and specializes in all aspects of information security, including mobile malware. His responsibilities include detecting and analyzing new malware. His research and analytical articles are published both on dedicated IT sites and in the mass media. He has been with the company since 2002, and is based in Moscow.

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