Klez retains number one virus spot

Internet worm Klez remained the most common malicious program to infect users during March.

The virus topped Kaspersky Labs' poll with 59.2 per cent of incidents last month, and came top of Central Command's 'Dirty Dozen' with 39.7 per cent. It beat off competition from BadTransII and Sircam.

The Klez worm deletes files on local and network drives and overwrites files with random data, making them impossible to restore.

But the Code Red worm, which infects unpatched versions of Microsoft's IIS web server, appears to be slowly dropping down the list.

Kaspersky Top 20

1 Klez 59.2%
2 Worm.BadtransII 18.0%
3 Trojan.PSW.Gip 3.0%
4 Sircam 2.4%
5 Zircon 2.1%
6 Hybris 1.9%
7 Tecata 1.9%
8 Magistr 1.0%
9 CodeRed 0.8%
10 Gibe 0.7%
11 Lentin 0.6%
12 Onex 0.5%
13 Backdoor.Death 0.4%
14 CIH 0.4%
15 FunLove 0.3%
16 Cervivec 0.3%
17 Aliz 0.2%
18 HappyTime 0.2%
19 Cap 0.2%
20 GaScript 0.1%

Central Command 'Dirty Dozen'

1 Klez 39.7%
2 Sircam 13.1%
3 Badtrans.B 11.8%
4 Nimda 6.2%
5 Funlove 3.6%
6 FBound.C 2.8%
7 Magistr.B 2.5%
8 Nimda.E 2.1%
9 Hybris 1.4%
10 Magistr.A 1.3%
11 Lentin 0.9%
12 Gibe 0.6%
Others 14.0%