Sober Makes A Comeback and Swamps 5% of Online Traffic

The most recent epidemic virus spread blamed on the Sober virus has already reached considerable proportion, which lead top security developers to issue a Radar Level 1 and also warn users that, according to recent data, more than 5 per cent of e-mail traffic is infected by the latest variant of the Sober worm.

This specific variant of the worm has spread surprisingly well considering authorities knew about its existence and issued warnings for users not to access these e-mails and open the attachments.
Only the first few hours after being spotted online, the worm was believed to have contributed with 1% of the total Internet traffic.

The worm arrives in a variety of disguises, claiming to include pictures of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie or to have been sent by the FBI, the CIA or the German authorities as a result of monitoring the user's online illegal activity.

It's interesting to find that mass mailer worms are still very much alive and kicking even if many experts believed such malware was already outdated by worms and viruses focused on identity theft, DoS attacks, phishing campaigns and the like.