Security software developer PC Tools declared that up to 50 percent of new spyware threats originated from China and Russia aims specific information for identity theft.

The advice comes among a flood of terrible predictions, as fraudsters and malware writers gear up for a busy Christmas.

Hackers and security experts made public a vulnerability in Google's search appliances that is putting hundreds of major organizations such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Stanford University and the National Hockey League open to phishing attacks.

A new adware program like a ghost installs itself on Mac OS X systems and opens Web browser windows, said F-Secure.

The software, dubbed iAdware by the Finnish security company, is perhaps the first example of adware for Macs. It is particularly interesting since it doesn't require administrative privileges to lie on the computers, according to F-Secure.

Symantec on Monday offered public beta versions of Norton Internet Security 2007 and Norton AntiVirus 2007 for Microsoft's imminent Windows Vista.

As malware is more and more written with a specific goal in mind, antivirus firms are deploying more intelligent recognition tools and creating unique signatures for individual clients.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is advising customers about unrequested e-mails they may receive for a special invitation from The Oprah Winfrey Show to attend a show taping. The e-mails are unauthorized and part of a con intended to defraud money or gain personal information from consumers.

Canada's biggest internet service providers have announced that they are installing filters to block illegal child exploitation content from their customers.

Efforts to eliminate piracy have been with computers since it became possible to make a copy of a program and run it on another computer successfully. Anti-piracy software, code wheels, license keys, hardware dongles and more all failed in some way, either through the use of a master key code, a crack that changed trial software into the full version, eliminated the check for dongles, or somehow picked the lock of anti-protections.

IT security vendor, Sophos, has presented a new version of Sophos Anti-Virus which supports the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system, including the much debated Patchguard kernel locker.

AttackAPI provides simple and intuitive web programmable interface for composing attack vectors with JavaScript and other client and server related technologies. This is the 2.x branch which among other improvements introduces better interaction with the attack subroutines.