Top Ten viruses most frequently detected by Panda ActiveScan

Madrid, October 4 2004 - For the fourth month running, the Downloader.GK Trojan has infected more computers than any other malicious code, according to the data gathered by Panda ActiveScan the free, online scanner.

In September, the Downloader.GK Trojan was responsible for 21.32 percent of infections. Next came Mhtredir.gen (6.64%) a generic detection for a large family of Trojans. In third and fourth place came two well-known worms: Netsky.P (5.78%) and Sasser.ftp (5.53%) -which includes all the Sasser worms that download to computers via ftp. Gaobot.gen (4.62%) the generic detection of this family of worms was in fifth place while sixth and seventh place were filled by the Trojans Briss.A (4.01%) and StartPage.FH (3.96%). The final places in the ranking included Mabutu.A (3.25%) and the Trojans Qhost.gen (3.19%) and Downloader.JH (2.9%).

The following conclusions can be drawn from the data collected by Panda ActiveScan last month:

- Trojans still going strong. The trend of recent months continues with Trojans occupying more than half of the ranking. This is symptomatic of an increase in the activity of cyber-criminals on the Internet using Trojans as tool.

- Software vulnerabilities are once again a threat. Four of the Top Ten use vulnerabilities in commonly used applications to infect computers, which highlights the number of users that haven´t applied the corresponding patches. This is particularly concerning now with the discovery of the Exploit/MS04-028 vulnerability, which affects the viewing of JPEG files and will no doubt be used by numerous malicious code in the future.

To help as many users as possible keep their systems virus free, Panda Software offers Panda ActiveScan, free of charge, at http://www.pandasoftware.com/ .Webmasters who would like to include ActiveScan on their websites can get the HTML code, free of charge, from http://www.pandasoftware.com/partners/webmasters/

Panda Software also offers users Virus Alerts, an e-bulletin in English and Spanish that gives immediate warning of the emergence of potentially dangerous malicious code. To receive Virus Alerts just visit Panda Software´s website (http://www.pandasoftware.com/ ) and complete the corresponding form in the Virus Alerts section.

For more information about these and other viruses, visit Panda Software´s Virus Encyclopedia at: http://www.pandasoftware.com/virus_info/encyclopedia

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