January was a quiet month for viruses. The year kicked off with a proof of concept virus, Donut, which attacked files on Microsoft's new baby, the .Net platform, but no real damage was caused.
If anything, Donut just served to show the industry that the virus writers are on the ball when it comes to new technology.
Aside from Donut, the only other virus to hit the headlines in any big way was MyParty, which gatecrashed PCs disguised as a URL.
Like Donut, MyParty failed to make a mess. It was dealt with quickly and ejected from the party by the antivirus teams.
But it did reveal a new and sneaky way of socially engineering unwitting users into opening malicious files. By disguising itself as a URL, the .com executable could have wreaked havoc on users' machines.
Below, vnunet.com brings you the Top 20 most prolific viruses of January this year.
| Top Twenty Viruses this Month | ||
| 1 | Badtrans.B | 61.1% |
| 2 | MyParty.A | 4.3% |
| 3 | Magistr.B | 3.6% |
| 4 | Sircam | 2.9% |
| 5 | Nimda.A | 2.3% |
| 6 | Maldal.G | 1.6% |
| 7 | Magistr.A | 1.4% |
| 8 | Gokar | 1.3% |
| 9 | Klez | 1.3% |
| 10 | Nimda.D | 1.0% |
| 11 | Thus | 0.2% |
| 12 | Hooker | 0.2% |
| 13 | Death | 0.2% |
| 14 | Seeker | 0.2% |
| 15 | Goner | 0.1% |
| 16 | TheSecond | 0.1% |
| 17 | Stator | 0.1% |
| 18 | GOPworm | 0.1% |
| 19 | FunLove | 0.1% |
| 20 | VMPCK | 0.1% |
| Others | 19.2% | |