Computer viruses in January

The first month of 2010 was even more peaceful than the already quiet December, at least as far as the Hungarian malware landscape is concerned. The only surprise was the resurrection of an old worm, according to VirusBuster's experts.

The Hungary-based specialist of IT security continuously monitors virus occurrence and activity. Data from VirusBuster's mail protection systems -- in-house and externally deployed alike -- is collected and processed. VirusBuster uses the results to generate monthly statistics of the most frequent infections. These monthly virus toplists are published on the company's website as well (http://www.virusbuster.hu/en/viruslab/virus-toplist).

The latest, January stats (shown below) reflect a quiet period. Fortunately, Hungarian computer users had to face even less threats than during last December, which already proved to be an unusually peaceful month. In the first month of 2010, the malware landscape was mostly determined by traditional botnet programs, such as Backdoor.Nepoe.GX, Backdoor.Nepoe.HL and Worm.Rbot.MCG. "Though, with its 1.14% share, it is the 10th on the toplist, the last of the trio deserves special attention. Worm.Rbot.MCG was first detected almost 3 years ago, so its resurrection came as a surprise to researchers", says Gábor Szappanos, the head of VirusBuster's virus lab. Another major category on the January toplist is that of trojan downloaders, including Trojan.DL.Agent.SKIT and Trojan.Bredolab.AOG. These malicious programs are distributed by e-mail.

Trojans, mentioned above, are malicious programs, which got their name from the legendary wooden horse built by the Greeks to defeat Troy: They pretend to serve users, but in fact they are designed to cheat their victims. Botnets are networks of unknowing victim PCs (called zombies), which are controlled by hackers. Users should take steps to get rid of botnet malware, since otherwise they may become accomplices in the cybercriminals' activities, warns Gábor Szappanos.

VirusBuster's malware toplist for January 2010: