McAfee Names Worst Viruses

Mon Jul 26, 6:00 AM ET


Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service

A rivalry between the creators of the Netsky and Bagle viruses helped cause a dramatic increase in threats in the first half of the year, but the most serious was Download.Ject, a Trojan horse program that exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer, according to McAfee.

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McAfee's Anti-virus and Vulnerability Emergency Response Team (AVERT) ranks Exploit-MhtRedir.gen, also known as Download.Ject or Scob, as the top threat because it was used in a high number of attacks against both corporations and consumers. It also took advantage of the widely-used IE browser, and was a new type of threat, says Vincent Gullotto, AVERT vice president.


AVERT is releasing a list of the ten biggest malicious threats in the first half of this year. For the first time, the company considered not just the prevalence of the threat in terms of reports from end users, but also special circumstances, Gullotto says. Those include whether the threat hit corporations, whether it represented a new approach, and whether a patch was available for it. The Netsky-Bagle rivalry is another factor.

Deadliest Threats


About 60 percent of all the malicious threats tracked by AVERT are what McAfee calls Potentially Unwanted Programs, giving customers the chance to decide whether they want to keep the software. These include adware and spyware, which may even be legitimate programs but end up on a system without the user's knowing consent, Gullotto says. Reports of such programs are increasing both because the software is growing more prevalent and because McAfee has added more reporting capabilities for it, he adds.


Here are McAfee's top ten threats of the year so far:

..................Wait, hold on a minute. Doesn't publishing a list of the "top ten, deadliest viruses" just feed right into the motivation of the people who create these viruses anyways? Why don't they just hold an awards ceremony for these viruses and their creators?

-- XXOO Tanya