Almost five percent of emails being sent at the moment carry the latest version of the high-profile Sober worm, antivirus firm Sophos has said. The Sober-N worm - which often arrives in an email offering free tickets to next year's football World Cup - has been spotted in over 40 different countries:
Since the worm first emerged on Monday it has dominated the chart of most commonly encountered viruses. At the time of writing it is accounting for 79.29% of all viruses seen by Sophos's monitoring stations around the world. Sophos experts calculate that the worm is now accounting for an astonishing 4.5% of all email (legitimate or otherwise) sent across the internet.
"1 in every 22 emails sent across the internet is currently infected by the Sober-N worm - making this one of the biggest virus outbreaks of the year," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "All internet users must secure their systems with up-to-date anti-virus software and ensure that they never open unsolicited email attachments. No-one should be fooled into thinking that email viruses are a thing of the past."
Of course, the fact that it is one in every 22 emails doesn't mean that one in every 22 machines is infected: but there's clearly a huge problem with this, and other, worms.
