Communication services such as e-mail, instant messaging, file sharing would continue to be abused by content threats such as image spam, malicious URLs, and attachments via targeted and localised socially engineered themes due to their effectiveness in luring potential victims as criminals attempt to increase the size of botnets and steal confidential information. Data protection and software security strategies would become standard in the commercial software lifecycle due to the increasing high-profile incidents. This will also put a focus on data encryption technologies during storage and transit particularly in the vetting ofdata access in the information and distribution chain.

According to research from Trend Micro’s TrendLabsSM, hackers are intensifying their attacks on legitimate Web sites. The number of compromised Web sites are slowly outnumbering malicious ones created specifically by cyber criminals. It debunks the adage to ‘not visit questionable sites’ because even trusted Web sites such as those belonging to Fortune 500 companies, schools and Government organisations could hold malware.

Security threats are no longer limited to PCs. Mobile devices are at risk for the same types of threats as PCs (viruses, spam, Trojans, malware, etc.) Gadgets with wireless capabilities such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, as well as storage capability have become major sources of data leaks, as well as carriers of infections through security perimeters. The report pointed out that the Windows animated cursor exploit(EXPL_ANICMOO) encompassed over 50 per cent of all exploit codes to hit the Internet computing population. 74 percent of its infections this year came from Asia and the same held for TROJ_ANICMOO.AX, a related threat which embedded the exploit. 64 per cent of computers infected with this were from China. The top malware finding was WORM_SPYBOT.IS and WORM_GAOBOT.DF. Both created botnets and worms that infected USB-connected devices. It noted that nearly 50 per cent of all threat infections come from North America, but Asian countries are also experiencing a growth --40 percent of infections stem from Asia. Social networking communities and user-created content such as blog sites became infection vectors due to attacks on Web 2.0 technologies, particularly cross-site scripting and streaming technologies. The report said infection volumes nearly quadrupled between September and November 2007, indicating that malware authors took advantage of the holiday seasons as an opportunity to send spam or deploy spyware while users are shopping online. In 2007, the number one online commerce site attacked by phishers was still global auction site eBay and sister company PayPal. Financial institutions, especially those based in North America, also experienced a high volume of phising attacks, it added.