May '05: Worst Virus Month in Years

Here's some interesting stats from Trend Micro's May virus report. TrendLabs documented 1,505 new malware, bringing the total for 2005 over the 8,000 mark - a 200% increase over last year for the same period.

Also in May, Trend Micro's World Tracking Center recorded the highest number of infections in a single month since August 2003 - a month that brought the likes of Blaster, Welchi, Sobig.F, and Dumaru. These worms were all discovered within days of one another, prompting some antivirus vendors to proclaim that week in August 2003 the 'worst virus week ever'.

Some of the worms causing problems in May 2005 included Sober.P, Zafi.D, variants of Netsky, and Mytob variants AR and BI.