Afraid of change, they stick with outdated virus software, operating systems and browsers

January 31, 2008 (IDG News Service) Some estimates suggest spyware problems in the U.S. are decreasing, but writers of all kinds of malware are prevailing -- partly because of computer user behavior, antispyware experts said Thursday.

Computer users run outdated antivirus software, operating systems and browsers because they're scared of change, said Janie "CalamityJane" Whitty, administrator of security software vendor Lavasoft's online support forums.

Posted by Mark Wagie at 17:52

January 28, 2008  The majority of Web sites serving up attack code are legitimate domains that have been hacked by criminals, according to security research firm Websense Inc.

In a report released last week, San Diego-based Websense said that credible sites accounted for 51% of those classified as malicious. The sites had been compromised by hackers who seeded them with attack code that infected unpatched machines visiting those addresses, it said.

A year earlier, Websense estimated that about 35% of malicious sites were actually legitimate sites that had been compromised.

Posted by Sean Cannon in Virus & AntiVirus News at 10:45

Security experts have warned internet users to beware of new worms exploiting this year's Valentine's Day.

Panda Security has identified the worms as Nuwar.OL and Valentin.E.

"Year after year we see several malware strains that use Valentine's Day as bait to attract users," said Luis Corrons, technical director of Panda Labs.

Posted by Sean Cannon in Virus & AntiVirus News at 08:00

The volume - if not the variety - of malware samples has undergone almost exponential growth over the last three years.

Malware samples reached 5,490,960 in 2007, five times more than the 972,606 recorded in 2006; which was itself almost three times more than the 333,425 recorded in 2005. The figures, compiled by AV-Test.org, represent a growth in the number of variants of the same piece of malware rather than the creation of numerous new malware strains.

Posted by Sean Cannon in Virus & AntiVirus News at 09:29