14 DAY TRIAL // Security vendor Sophos has released a top ten email-based malware threats today, revealing that Troj/Pushdo has won the first place, with 29.3 percent. In case this codename doesn't say a thing to you, you should know that this is the threat which acts by informing you that some hot nude pictures with Angelina Jolie or Britney Spears are available for you, but it actually aims to infect your computer. Certainly, nothing new since it has become so popular. W32/Traxg comes in the second place with 23.6 percent, while the third place is given to W32/Netsky with 17.8 percent. The last two places of the top have been given to W32/Strati and W32/Bagle with 2.8 points and 1.0 points.
"Traxg hurtling into second position this month has come as a complete surprise, and the fact that unsophisticated worms are still slipping through the net at such a rate of knots is a clear indication that huge numbers of users, and potentially companies, are failing to install even basic anti-virus protection," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
This obviously shows us that we must always protect our computers and especially our inboxes, since such dangerous threats are aiming to reach our email accounts. Sure, it's easy to defend your system if you are paranoiac and you ignore all the untrusted or unknown messages, but what if you're one of the users who communicate a lot by email with hundreds of contacts?
"In first place, Pushdo continues to wreak havoc. A clear reason for its ongoing success is the guilty cybercriminal's ability to quickly create different variants, which are being spread voraciously in a range of spam messages. Each new piece of spam that harbours the trojan has been created to tempt users, and whether it's enticing them to watch videos of Britney or view naked pictures of Angelina, this fraudster's tactics are certainly working", the Sophos official continued.