British companies have suffered 60% fewer malware infections than two years ago as a result of near-universal use of anti-virus and anti-spyware, but cybercriminals are now aiming at less well-defended targets, such as home PC users, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report.

The 2008 Information Security Breaches survey carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform will be published at the Infosecurity conference in London next week.

Posted by Sean Cannon in Virus & AntiVirus News at 13:08

McAfee Avert Labs has discovered a file that appears to be a cartoon movie that ridicules the effort of a Chinese gymnast at the games, followed by images supporting a free Tibet.

But the cartoon does more than protest against China, says McAfee researcher, Patrick Comiotto. “While the movie runs, a keystroke logging tool is installed onto the user's Windows PC and hidden by a rootkit, making it harder to detect and remove.”

Comiotto explains that this is a pro-Tibet rootkit. “What looks like a simple Flash movie actually silently drops a number of files onto your PC and then hides those files.”

Posted by Sean Cannon in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 13:05

Chief executives have been warned to be on their guard against a campaign of personalised spear phishing attacks.

Reports surfaced last week of emails arriving with bogus subpoenas requesting the named chief executive to click on a link purporting to contain court documents.

The link actually leads to a plug-in that contains a Trojan with the ability to take over the victim's computer.

The reason this attack is so dangerous is that it is correctly addressed and identifies the chief executive by name

Posted by Sean Cannon in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 09:34