“The latest Sober worm has spread rapidly in the past 24 hours and now makes up two-thirds of virus traffic on the Internet, according to security experts,” Dawn Kawamoto reports for CNET News.
“Sober.P, first detected on Monday, now accounts for 77 percent of all viruses detected by Sophos’s threat-monitoring stations worldwide, the British security company said Tuesday. At the same time, Kaspersky Lab, a Russian maker of antivirus software designed to combat such threats, described the worm’s spread in Western Europe as an ‘epidemic,'” Kawamoto reports.
Full article here.
Systems affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP.
MacDailyNews Take: Macintosh unaffected. For our Windows-only friends, there really is a better way, so for more information about smoothly adding a safe, secure, powerful, and fun Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal, please click here. For inexpensive entry to the Mac platform, you might want to take a look at Apple’s new Mac Mini which starts at just US$499 — it just might be the perfect machine for you. And don’t forget to order it with 512MB RAM, you’ll want it.
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… due to the incredible lack of interest in World Cup soccer.
Timing is everything…
it’s not spreading fast enough, not affecting enough computers yet.
who wrote this damn thing? can’t you make it work faster and hit more PCs simultaneously?
“it’s not spreading fast enough, not affecting enough computers yet.
who wrote this damn thing? can’t you make it work faster and hit more PCs simultaneously?”
Well, they are working with PCs……
Who’s laughing now, Gatesy? There goes another bit of your market share, you schlockmeister. Apple Retail Stores are open late and Apple.com takes orders 25/7/365 – free yourself today!
guess they should’ve stolen it from Longhorn if they really wanted it to work…
B-Sabre:
hilarious!! how absolutely, absolutely true. they are already slowed down by previous viruses, bugs, spyware, etc., and mostly poorly configured, so even viruses spread slowly. hey, that’s a new deterrent, maybe the only deterrent for windowz – make you computer so slow it cannot transmit viruses as quickly….
Just put Sober on a computer and you can immediately tell whether you are on a PC or a Mac — Bill Gates, May 2005
Apple gives their loyal users an awesome Tiger.
Microsoft gives their loyal users worms.
What’s a virus?
I wanted to see what all the fuss was about so I tried opening my “Free Ticket” email, but my stupid G5 can’t open the attachment.
I even upgraded to Tiger to see if I won and still nothing.
I hate Mac…
“Systems affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP.”
And why the very same piece of C/C++ code is able to infect all the above systems? Because they for the most share LOTS of code. What really changes is the eye-candy on your screen but the same flaw and design crap that is targeted by Sober on Windows 95 is on Windows XP.
Evolution?? GIMME A BREAK!
Microsoft Windows, the most successful scam in IT ever.
You guys are all so funny! I like the Bill Gates quote from iPodder, teh B-Sabre comment about using PCs, and the quote from bad news bear about hating Mac because he/she can’t seem to run this darn Free Ticket. In addition to having the intelligence to choose the best OS as opposed to choosing the one that all the other sheep are running, you also have a good sense of humor!
Jimbo,
Can you tell me if I’ve won?
Does anyone here have a PC I can send this attachment to? I’ll give you one of the tickets if I win!!
So will I have to upgrade my Tiger to Longhorn in order to open this thing?
“Apple.com takes orders 25/7/365”
Wow…Apple’s so busy these days that they get an extra hour everday to fill orders!
This is typical Apple fanatical BS. Yeah, Sober.P is a REAL threat to our systems…
Oh wait…It got the lowest rating.
Hmm, no wonder its spreading through europe. These people are to stupid to a)patch a system b)Turn on firewalls and filters.
Pathetic.
(mw) English
You Windows losers are pathetic. Gee thanks for polluting the internet with more of your virus traffic, no wonder the entire net has been slower the past 24 hours or so…
if the percentage is 77, then why does the text not say three fourths instead of two thirds? why downplay what is going on (c|net did this too)?
my MW was directly; i had previously had the magic word direct once; so i have progressed from adjectives to adverbs!
big dick:
That’s typical wintel patcher fanatical BS.
Yeah, Europeans are all “to (sic) stupid” – that MUST be the reason. (check your grammar with Tiger’s built in dick-tionary, big dick).
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/5666/
Oh wait, you can’t..
Oh wait…USA education and general knowledge and a lot of other things are NOT actually #1!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8191.htm
“The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
The International Adult Literacy Survey…found that Americans with less than nine years of education ‘score worse than virtually all of the other countries'” (Jeremy Rifkin’s superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
“The European Union leads the U.S. in…the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised” (The European Dream, p.70).
“Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature” (The European Dream, p.70).”
“truth”, as in USA is not #1 in many things that matter.
The USA is most in nuclear weapons. What matters more than that?
P.S. Don’t piss them off. I live between The USA and Europe and I don’t want to get caught in the fallout.
Yeah, And in 1944 My grandfather fought in europe so you could write on MDN, and not drink coffee in Paris speaking German.
Yeah, that didnt matter now did it?
Sorry, but I always thought American’s thought the Earth revolved around America, not the sun or whatever.
I think this virus is pretty pathetic, Its too easy to remove.
mw (Saw) as in I saw really bad viruses and worms back in 1998
“Yeah, And in 1944 My grandfather fought in europe so you could write on MDN, and not drink coffee in Paris speaking German.”
So what does that have to do with YOU? Just because you’re related to him, doesn’t mean crap.
And the Europeans helped the American colonials out so that USA actually exists … the only bit of history that matters …
MW is police (yes really!), as in … well fill in the blanks …
Bill Gates : the big Virus epidemic guy!