Sobig.f Breaks All Records

The sixth version of the Sobig worm has been out in the wild for only one day, but the epidemic has already spread all over the world. In fact, anti-virus experts at Kaspersky Lab confirm that the Sobig.f epidemic is the most serious outbreak they have witnessed within the last year and a half. Only Klez, an e-mail worm identified in October 2001 and still 'wandering' about in the wild, has infected more computers than Sobig. "Sobig.f has almost achieved the infection rates of Lovesan, a network worm still spreading worldwide," comments Denis Zenkin, Head of Corporate Communications at Kaspersky Lab, "however, while Lovesan is potentially dangerous for the Internet as a whole, Sobig.f endangers individual users: the author of Sobig.f gains total control over infected machines". Kaspersky Lab e-mail statistics have already proved that Sobig.f is the leader among the more widespread malicious programs. As of 7 AM August 20 (GMT) Sobig.f has accounted for 92% of all malware detected by the in-house anti-virus: currently several hundred thousand computers have been infected. The widespread rampage of Sobig.f raises several concerns, the primary one being why? Why is a worm that uses a very simple method of infection so successful? Sobig does not exploit vulnerabilities in security systems, since users launch the worm themselves by opening attachments. Most of the computer world is aware of the dangers of clicking on suspicious attachments. It may well be that the author has used a spammer technology to generate a mass mailing of the malware which reached users worldwide. Kaspersky Lab recommend that you download the latest Kaspersky® Anti-Virus databases to protect your computer. Detailed information about Sobig.f is available in the Kaspersky Virus Encyclopedia.