This has not been a good couple of weeks for the Internet! First it was the Blaster virus, then a major power outage, then the Welchia (Good Guy) virus, and since Tuesday the sobig.f virus. These things have caused major e-mail issues for almost everyone that owns a computer. The sobig.f virus is now the most distributed virus ever. Previously the Klez virus held that title. Klez was detected 250,000 times in the first 24 hours. Sobig.f was detected over 1 million times in the first 24 hours. Currently, 1 in 17 emails is a product of sobig.f. It is expected that sobig.f will cause a 60% increase in Internet e-mails.
The real sad part about this is that this is your common every day attachment virus. Users that open the attachment trigger the virus immediately. Yes, the email can look like it came from someone they know, however the body of the message and the attachment names are pretty obviously fishy to say the least. Users should be able to smell the fish!
We are handling several calls a day with email related problems. Some people can't get there e-mail reliably while others can't stop the flood of infected emails hitting their mailboxes. Neither victim is happy!
There is a whole list of things that can be done to try and minimize the affects of these types of viruses. The most important being user education (I know I have said that 3,345 times before) and keeping your virus software up to date (3,128 times). For a more detailed list specific to your business contact us. I've thought about carrier pigeons but I think attachments would be a problem.
New Viruses Listed on Symantec's Website
8/18 = 8
8/19 = 3
8/20 = 5
8/21 = 3 (so far)
Educate Users (3,346) and Keep Virus Software Up To Date (3,129)
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