Hackers are setting up to attacks which target social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook in a multi-billion-dollar "cyberwar" next year, security experts warn.Network security experts expect cybercriminals to launch a campaign to gather personal information from users of the popular websites.

Private data including age, sex, marital status and locale are available on the sites, and malicious users plan to search the networking websites collecting this data and picking targets for phishing scams.

A laptop with personal data on hundreds of thousands of Boeing Co. employees was stolen earlier this month, and the aerospace company will notify those potentially affected by the theft in a company e-mail today.

"In the first week of December, a laptop was stolen from an employee's car," Boeing spokeswoman Kelly Danaghy said. "That laptop had files that contained Social Security numbers for about 382,000 past and present employees, and in most cases it also included a home address, phone number and date of birth."

It started on Feb. 15, 2005 with ChoicePoint (Alpharetta, GA) by bogus accounts established by ID thieves. The initial number of affected records was estimated at 145,000 but was later revised to 163,000.

The latest entry is on Dec. 9, 2006 when Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA) Personal information of 561 students was inadvertently sent as attachments on Nov. 20 in an e-mail, including names, SSNs, local and permanent addresses and grade-point averages. The e-mail was sent to 195 students to inform them of their eligibility for scholarships.

Linux.com readers might know Kurt Seifried as the author of the Linux Administrators' Security Guide or proprietor of the popular security mailing list. In this interview, he gives his views on how security in Linux has been stacking up and where it's lacking, what users can do to secure their systems, and whether every admin needs to know much about security.

Websense, Inc., a global leader in Web security and Web filtering software, released the results of its first European study of online Christmas shopping behaviour. The analysis found that whilst 75% of online Christmas shoppers were not totally certain about being able to identify a secure Website, only one in four considered keeping their credit card and online banking information safe and secure as their greatest concern.

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in various Sophos Anti-Virus products, which could be exploited by attackers or malware to take complete control of an affected computer or cause a denial of service.

A new warning has been issued by online gambling portals concerning Neteller users. Criminal fraudsters are again trying to fraudulently persuade online clients of the e-cash processor Neteller to reveal their account details on a fake Neteller site.

This week several portals were advising their visitors to beware of an email claiming to be from Neteller that says:

If you are logged into MySpace and view a suspicious crafted QuickTime file on someone else's MySpace page, then JavaScript code can without human intervention change your user profile. The nasty QuickTime file can alter your MySpace page by adding links to fake MySpace pages that collect user names and passwords. The Quicktime file can also copy itself to your MySpace page without your intervention.

Adware developers are probable to target the latest version of Internet Explorer with rising frequency in 2007, provoking a threat to user productivity, according to the Trend Micro chief technology officer for anti-spyware, Ed English.

CA has declared that it is providing virus and spyware protection for corporate customers and consumers using the new Microsoft Windows Vista operating system.

CA Threat Manager, CA Anti-Virus and CA Anti-Spyware for Windows Vista have been in beta testing release since June. They are also being used by Microsoft in its own enterprise environment to help safeguard Windows Vista resources.