How Bad was the Sobig Viral Infection?

Just how ill did the Sobig virus make the world’s personal computers and which region were worst affected? McAfee.com, manufacture of the world’s most popular anti-virus software, reports that 6.1% of the world’s personal computers it scanned had been infected during the past 30 days of this writing, 4.1% during the past 7 days, and less than 2% during the past 24 hours.

South America was worst hit: 12.1% during the past 30 days and 7% during the past 7 days. North America suffered second worst: 8.1% during the past 30 days and 5.3% during the past 7 days. Asia suffered the least: only 0.9% of computers during the past 30 days and less than 0.6% during the past 7 days. Sobig isn’t prevalent anywhere today, according to McAfee’s tracking.

Though Sobig was the most prevalent virus that McAfee tracked during the past 30 days and was the fourth most during the past 7 days. By the way, the most prevalent virus reported by McAfee during these periods was JS/NoClose, a javascript trojan that opens a browser window that cannot easily be closed. According to McAfee, JS/NoClose is “usually associated with advertisement and banner ad programs. Especially affiliated with pornographic sites and sites which pay commissions to others for displaying banner ads.” It won’t kill a Windows PC, as Sobig will, but will aggravate you.

What We Do

Since 1996, the media business consulting firm of Digital Deliverance has provided publishers and broadcasters on four continents with strategic reviews and advice about how to profitably adapt to the epochal changes that computer-mediated technologies have wrought on the media environment and their industries.

Over the years, the firm’s clients have include The New York Times, News Corporation, The Irish Times of Dublin, Dagbladet of Oslo, The Mail & Guardian of Johannesburg, Advance Publications, Critical Mention, MediaNews Group, New Century Network, the Media Development Investment Fund, the National Cancer Institutes, and scores of other media firms that need to adapt to computer-mediated technologies and the rise of Individuated Media.

The managing partner of Digital Deliverance is Vin Crosbie, Adjunct Professor of postgraduate New Media Management at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication, in upstate New York. From 2007 through 2020, he wrote and was the sole instructor of the school’s New Media Business course, a course required for students in the New Media Management master’s degree curriculuum, an elective course for Ph.D. students, and a permission-only course for selected undergraduates and graduate students.

Digital Deliverance is incorporated as a limited liability company in the U.S. state of Connecticut, where it is based in the city of Norwich, Connecticut.