Kaspersky's May 2008 e-mail virus top 20 list was characterised only by the re-emergence of a few old worms, as virus writers in the northern hemisphere typically take a break during the summer months.
Although active in the first four months of the year, Trojan-downloader programs like Agent.ica, Agent.hsl and Diehard made no appearances in May.
The Warezov and Zhelatin worms have not resurfaced since dropping from the list in February.
Malware authors are no longer sending the executable components of the worms by e-mail, but have taken to distributing them via links to malicious Web sites.
The threat posed by malicious code in e-mail is still strong, however, as phishing and spam continue to feature strongly in e-mail traffic.
Kaspersky's May 2008 e-mail top 20 list is as follows:
1. Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.q (23.12%)
2. Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.y (9.70%)
3. Email-Worm.Win32.Scano.gen (9.63%)
4. Email-Worm.Win32.Nyxem.e (6.75%)
5. Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.d (6.27%)
6. Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.x (4.44%)
7. Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.aa (3.74%)
8. Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.b (3.26%)
9. Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.gt (2.75%)
10. Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.u (2.60%)
11. Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.c (2.40%)
12. Email-Worm.Win32.Scano.bn (2.09%)
13. Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.r (1.98%)
14. Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.t (1.94%)
15. Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.bi (1.65%)
16. Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.gen (1.39%)
17. Email-Worm.Win32.Mydoom.l (1.19%)
18. Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.t (1.08%)
19. Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.c (0.97%)
20. Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.cg (0.90%)
Other malicious programs (12.15%)
The top 20 countries of origin for infected e-mails are as follows:
1. United States (21.72%)
2. Poland (13.18%)
3. South Korea (7.88%)
4. Spain (5.85%)
5. China (5.15%)
6. France (4.07%)
7. Germany (3.54%)
8. Brazil (3.49%)
9. United Kingdom (2.83%)
10. India (2.82%)
11. Italy (2.66%)
12. Israel (1.80%)
13. Japan (1.66%)
14. Canada (1.15%)
15. Netherlands (1.07%)
16. Turkey (1.05%)
17. Australia (1.03%)
18. Argentina (1.02%)
19. Russia (0.99%)
20. Austria (0.91%)
Other countries (16.13%)
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