Top Viruses of the Year gone by

Top Viruses of the Year gone by

The year 2004 has gone and we have a new year in our hand. While we remember the year gone by, we cannot forget one thing. This year would see worse kind of viruses than ever before. With mobile viruses making their presence felt, antivirus firms have to work hard to stay up-to-date and of course, the users need to be more careful than ever in choosing what they download and run on their systems.

Here is a look back on some of the worst cases of last year. Reports from antivirus firm Panda says that Downloader.GK Trojan takes the prize for causing the maximum amount of damage to users computers. This is a first for a worm to take the honors as usually we see viruses resident on victim’s machine to be the most damaging kind of virus.

The report is based on Panda Software’s online virus scanner, which let users scan their computers for free on the Internet. They found this worm to be responsible for infecting 14% of the infected visiting customers. It spread when a user let a website run malicious ActiveX component in their browser. It downloads on the user’s computer and install additional adware programs further causing nuisance to the user.

The rest of the top 10 list contains well-known names like Netsky.P, Sasser.ftp, Gaobot.gen, Mhtredir.gen, Netsky.D, Downloader.L, Qhost.gen, Netsky.B, and StartPage.FH. Users are as usual advised to keep their software up-to-date and use softwares like an anti-virus and a firewall. They can also go to Panda Software website to get their system checked by their ActiveScan utility.