US-CERT has received reports of new Storm Worm activity circulating. The emails contain romantic or Valentine's Day greetings and provide links for users to click on. The links are in the form of actual IP addresses, such as http:/x.x.x.x, although actual domain names may also be used. If a user clicks on the link provided, they will be directed to a malicious website that will attempt to exploit a variety of vulnerabilities and install malware onto the user's system.

Important information came from London: the internet users are advised to watch out for Mebroot - a sneaky Windows virus that is capable to steal, for online bank accounts, login details.The period between 12 December and 7 January was ill-fated, especially for those in Europe: almost 5,000 computers were infected by the nasty program.

Bzub is an extremely versatile spyware created to steal banking information.It seems that it originated in Mother Russia to be rapidly spread afterwards all over the world hence gaining various applications. It targets those using Windows XP, 2000, 2003.

After hearing about the association between the "Secret Crush" application and an important spyware producer, Facebook disqualified it.

According to official information, the separation is definite: "Facebook is committed to user safety and security and, to that end, its Terms of Service for developers explicitly state that applications should not use adware and spyware". They also declared that the Facebook Platform Terms of Service had been breached so they stopped the Secret Crush application.

As PCWorld stated, Prevx malware researchers have drawn attention to the dramatic increase in the number of PCs harboring rootkit infections.

During a two-month period research, the Prevx CSI malware scanner was used to scan over 725,000 PCs. One in six PCs scanned within October 2007 was infected with some form of spyware or malware .

Recent studies have showed great increase in global spam volumes over the last year, pointing to a switch from selling products towards spreading malware.

The 2008 Internet Security Trends Report from IronPort Systems gives a rather alarming estimation that 98 per cent of all email traffic is now spam.

In a recent PCadvisor article a rather interesting question popped up about whether antispyware is a mere waste of time and money.If, at first, the customary antivirus programs could not keep pace with infatigable annoying adware pop-ups and devious spyware, nowadays, virtually any antivirus program will attempt to block data-stealing spyware, and most of them succeed — or at least inform you about — adware and other questionable program.

Some of the newest anti-spam strategy might require computers to solve math problems in order to get an email accepted by the recipient’s email server. Sudoku vs. Spam.

Paul Gardner-Stephen from Flinders University in Adelaide is looking for ways to improve existing spam filters, which try to prevent unwanted email from getting to your inbox."The trouble is that they're not entirely accurate, so you still get some spam in your inbox and some real mail gets bounced," he says.

Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd.  announced a special 24-hour promotion whereby consumers can download ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware, a $29.95 value, for free at www.zonealarm.com/patchtuesday.

For the next 24-hours, Check Point will give away ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware free of charge. Users must provide a valid email address (one product per email address). The offer expires at 5 p.m. PST on Wednesday, Nov. 14. The company also is currently offering a free download of its brand-new ZoneAlarm ForceField virtual browser, another layer of protection available to consumers.

Commtouch announced the launch of a new online tool that publicizes data about global virus outbreaks. The Commtouch Malware Outbreak Center – available on Commtouch’s public web site – provides ongoing updates on the latest virus variants and how quickly anti-virus solutions can defend against them.