Posted 5 December 2005

The Sober worm is a fairly modest beast of the virus world, it’s tricks are old and there’s nothing particularly unusual about it. But it looks as if it will be the most successful virus written since it first appeared over two years ago.

This week, Information Week reported one security company blocked 218 MILLION copies of the Sober Worm in the past seven days. The UK security company Sophos reported 6% of all emails they scanned were infected with this virus. The volume of traffic generated by it is causing problems for Internet providers.

The success of this thing can be put down to the subject it poses as: It could be everything from old school photos, warnings from the CIA, tickets for the soccer World Cup and the predictable pictures of Paris Hilton. Once infected, the computer passes itself on to every email address it can find on the computer. It seems that some people don’t realise they have it.

The usual advice applies to keeping this nasty off your system: Don’t open attachments unless you really want them and don’t assume that because you know the sender the attachment will be safe. Our Computer Protection Kit page lists the software you need to protect yourself from Sober and other Internet threats.