By Tanya Klowden

There's a rule of thumb to avoid pickpocketing that is simply, "Don't be the easiest target." You don't have to be nigh invincible, just more trouble than the guy standing next to you. It's a rule of thumb that actually applies to a surprising number of other scenarios as well, and for a few years now, Mac users have taken comfort in their ability to slip under the radar merely on the virtue of being a system that was hard to come by and hard to get results with. Two recent Yahoo news articles serve as a sobering reminder that the days of security in our lack of numbers are coming to a close.

Posted by Spencer Cuffe in Virus & AntiVirus News at 09:22

By Stuart Corner

According to Internet security company, Panda Software, zombie computers are now the biggest source of spam on the Internet.
A zombie is a computer infected with malware that enables the sender of the malware to take control of it. The malware most frequently used to convert computers into zombies are 'bots' - Trojans designed to automatically respond to commands of their creators.

Posted by Spencer Cuffe in Virus & AntiVirus News at 09:12

By Mike Slocombe

Attacks against non-Windows operating systems - particularly Linux - are growing quickly, according to a Kaspersky Lab report.

Although the figures are infinitesimally small compared to the depressingly regular onslaught of nasty beasties targeting Windows users, Linux malware figures more than doubled in 2005 (up to 863 from the previous year's 422).

Posted by Spencer Cuffe in Virus & AntiVirus News at 08:54

By Gregg Keizer

The trouble is that rootkits make it very difficult to completely cleanse a system of all evidence of an attack.

Rootkits that hide malicious software from anti-virus and anti-spyware tools are growing in number and sophistication, and will pose an unprecedented risk to users by 2008, security company McAfee said this week.

In the opening quarter of 2006, said McAfee in the first of a trilogy of reports on rootkits, its Avert Labs spotted more rootkit components in worms, Trojan horses, and spyware than in all of 2005. During the past three years, the use of rootkits in malicious code has soared by more than 600 percent.

"There have been dramatic increases in the last year or two," said Stuart McClure, a McAfee vice-president and the chief of Avert Labs. "This hasn't been a linear ramp-up."

Posted by Spencer Cuffe in Virus & AntiVirus News at 08:51