Thanks to the havoc that Sobig-F and the Blaster worms wreaked a few weeks ago, August
reportedly has gone down as the worst month in digital history for virus attacks.
Last month, viruses, along with overt and covert hacker attacks, caused $32.8 billion in
economic damages, according to a new report from mi2g, a digital risk assessment company
based in London. Mi2g also notes that the Sobig virus alone accounted for $29.7 billion of
economic damages worldwide.
”August damage figures tower well above all previous months since our records began in
1995,” says D.K. Matai, executive chairman of mi2g. ”The whole issue of trustworthy
computing is now at stake.”
Mi2g also reports that Sobig has become the most damaging virus on record, overtaking
malicious rivals Klez, Love Bug and Yaha. The Klez worm has been pushed to second place on
the infamous list, causing $13.9 billion worth of damage. The Love Bug is now in the third
position, accounting for $8.75 billion in damages.
Chris Belthoff, a senior security analyst with Sophos, Inc., an anti-virus company based in
Lynfield, Mass., says August will go down in the record books — just as it will go down in
the memories of the anti-virus experts and IT managers who had to battle the virus onslaught
last month.
”August 2003 will be remembered as one of the worst months in the history of computer
security,” says Belthoff. ”The Sobig-F worm clogged up inboxes and crippled networks with
the sheer volume of email traffic it produced. Users and companies should remain on guard
and put systems in place to protect against future attacks.”
Sobig-F, the latest member of the malicious Sobig virus family, hit the Internet hard,
flooding email servers and inboxes. Corporate networks staggered under the barrage with
network access slowing to a crawl, and some email systems being taken temporarily offline to
stop the siege.
Sobig-F is designed to die out on Sep. 10. That’s leading many analysts to suspect that the
next variant will hit on Sep. 11 or soon after. And if that variant builds on the malicious
success of Sobig-F, then the damage could be even worse.
With all that damage under its belt, it’s no wonder that Sobig-F topped the charts for the
most frequently occurring virus in August, according to both Sophos and Central Command,
Inc., an anti-virus company based in Medina, Ohio.
Sophos has Blaster-A, Nachi-A, Mimail-A and Yaha-P rounding out the top five viruses.
Central Command lists them as Blaster-A, MiMail-A, Nachi-A and Klez-E.
”The month of August turned into a plague of Internet worms affecting computer users
worldwide,” says Steven Sundermeier, vice president of products and services at Central
Command. ”
