February 3, 2015

Russian anti-virus company Doctor Web presents its January 2015 virus activity overview. The past month witnessed the intensified activity of spammers distributing malware and the emergence of dangerous, new applications for Linux and Android.

January was marked by the massive distribution via email of the dangerous downloader program Trojan.DownLoad3.35539. This program downloads and launches Trojan.Encoder.686 encryption ransomware on infected PCs. This is probably why Trojan.Encoder.686 wound up being the most common encryption malware program of the past month. Botnets comprised of machines infected with the file infector Win32.Sector and the backdoor program for Mac OS X BackDoor.Flashback.39 are still operational.

Linux did not escape the attention of virus writers either: the file infector Linux.EbolaChan was the most notable malware program of the month. Furthermore, several banking Trojans for Android were added into the Dr.Web virus database in January.

Read about these events and other developments in IT security in the detailed virus activity review from Doctor Web.