Homepage, Hybris, Magistr-A Make Rounds in May -- Redmondmag.com

Homepage, Hybris, Magistr-A Make Rounds in May

By Scott Bekker
06/04/2001

The Homepage worm, the Hybris B worm and Magistr-A virus harried IT administrators in the month of May, according to two anti-virus vendors.

Sophos and Central Command each issued lists of the most frequently reported viruses to their response teams.

Additionally, both companies received significant reports of the politically motivated Mawanella worm, highlighting the plight of Muslim villagers in Sri Lanka.

Central Command noted that two of the high-profile viruses on its "Dirty Dozen" list, Mawanella and Homepage, were generated using the [K]alamar virus creation toolkit.

Sophos ranked Homepage as by far the most common virus. Referring to the Visual Basic Script virus as VBS/VBSWG-X, Sophos said the new vulnerability accounted for 37.5 percent of its problem reports in May. The worm directs infected users to pornographic Web sites. Central Command ranked Homepage third.

Hybris-B, ranked first by Central Command and third by Sophos, is a highly configurable Internet worm that often appears in e-mails with the subject line: Snowhite and the Seven Dwarfs -- the REAL Story.

Magistr-A, ranked second by Sophos and third by Central Command, is a nasty polymorphic Win32 executable file virus that spreads via e-mail and infected files. It can delete all files from local and network drives, wipe CMOS settings, and flash the BIOS chip.

The lists:

Sophos Top 10
1 VBS/VBSWG-X (Homepage) (37.5 percent)
2 W32/Magistr-A (24.5 percent)
3 W32/Hybris-B (7.1 percent)
4 W32/Badtrans-A (6.9 percent)
5 W32/Apology-B (4.4 percent)
6 VBS/Kakworm (3.9 percent)
7 VBS/VBSWG-Z (2.1 percent)
8 WM97/Marker (1.5 percent)
9 W32/Bymer-A (1 percent)
9 W32/Flcss (1 percent)
Others (10.1 percent)

Central Command's "Dirty Dozen"
1 I-Worm.Hybris.B (20.6 percent)
2 VBS.Homepage.A (16.7 percent)
3 W32.Magistr.A (11.4 percent)
4 I-Worm.MTX (5.8 percent)
5 I-Worm.Hybris.D (5.2 percent)
6 W95.CIH (3.2 percent)
7 I-Worm.Hybris.E (3 percent)
8 VBS.Plan.B (2.7 percent)
9 VBS.SST.A (2.2 percent)
10 I-Worm.Badtrans (2.1 percent)
11 VBS.Mawanella.A (2.1 percent)
12 VBS.Loveletter.A (2 percent)
Others (23 percent)

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

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