Reports from organisations such as MessageLabs and Central Command have found that the Yaha worm is near the top of their virus lists.
UK-based managed security provider MessageLabs lists Yaha (W32/Yaha.E-mm) in its top five viruses on its Web site. First captured mid-June, MessageLabs stats show it stopped the worm 60,000 times, in more than 97 countries, according to its Web site. It ranks the Netherlands, Great Britain and the US as the top three countries for the Yaha worm.
Likewise, US-based service provider Central Command ranks Yaha.E as number four in its monthly listing of the top 12 viruses reported for June, based on the number of virus occurances confirmed through its Emergency Virus Response Team.
However, reports of it infecting computers in Australia have been low. When contacted for this story, antivirus software vendors Network Associates and Sophos Anti-Virus both said reported incidences of Yaha in Australia had been low so far.
-At this stage we're not getting people ringing up and reporting it to our support people," Network Associates' Allan Bell said.
Last month ZDNet Australia looked at the incidence of viruses reported, with industry pundits warning businesses to keep the figures in perspective.
Paul Ducklin, head of local support at Sophos Anti-Virus, said the Yaha worm seems to show that the number of e-mails floating around which contain a virus isn't really a good measure for the number of computers infected by a particular virus.
"It seems that the ratio of [e-]mails to infections for Yaha is rather higher than that of, say, Klez," Ducklin said. "But for both of these viruses, the number of [e-]mails produced by the virus is much greater than the number of infected PCs."
Ducklin said that, in contrast, viruses that didn't deliver themselves automatically by e-mail may become widespread without even making a blip on e-mail-based statistics. -A good example is the Elkern virusââ,¬"this is delivered by Klez but spreads using network shares, not by e-mail," he said.
-This means that a single Klez infection often produces a large number of Elkern infectionsââ,¬"to the extent that Elkern is the second most prevalent virus at the moment, but it hardly shows up in e-mail stats at all."
Yaha-E is described as a worm which spreads via e-mail, that can be variable and contain a spoofed -from" fieldââ,¬"which means the source of the e-mail displayed by the user's e-mail client isn't necessarily the e-mail's genuine origin, according to Sophos' Australian Web site.
Yaha-E arrives disguised as a friendship screensaver, according to a statement issued by Central Command.
I have contracted a mass mailing worm, perhaps frathem or yaha...but how do i get rid of it?
I have now installed pc-cillen 2002. Your advice would be appreciated.