MessageLabs, a principal supplier of integrated messaging and web security services to businesses worldwide, today announce the findings of its MessageLabs Intelligence Report for April 2007. In this report, MessageLabs  presents a new level in the convergence between spam and viruses through intercepted cyber-criminal activity, whilst highlighting the boost in spam levels and the surfacing of new techniques which have led to decreased rates in traditional virus and phishing threats.

Keylogger is a program that captures and logs keystrokes as they are entered on the computer for the purpose of monitoring the user. The logged data, which may be encrypted, is saved or sent to the person who installed the key logger. That's what happened to the users of Omerta online game.

The Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC) has concluded its landmark "best practices" for the anti-spyware community. The document offers a critical tool to customers and software developers.

At first, they said that Skype collects user data. Then the details came in: it’s not Skype who reads your computer’s BIOS, it’s a separate piece of code which is used under license by Skype. All in all, your motherboard serial number is being read by somebody other than you and Skype facilitates this.

GRISOFT offers a FREE AntiSpyware tool which provides:

• Daily database updates,
• Heuristics to detect unknown threats,
• Automatic Cleaning Engine,
• and most of all ... great user satisfaction !
  

Bank customers of at least two Australian banks have become victims of a phishing scam in which malicious payload discloses the physical location of attacked IP addresses using Google Maps. Bank of America and Germany's Deutsche Bank were also attacked.
Wow ..Would you think of that ? Read on.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that New York has achieved ground-breaking settlements with three major online advertisers for endorsing products and services on the Internet through deceptively installed programs known as “adware.”
The implications of these settlements go beyond the amount of penalties….

PandaLabs has released its list of the spyware most frequently detected by Panda ActiveScan in 2006. The top ranking spyware is Gator. This adware offers free use of an program if users agree to view a series of pop-up messages downloaded by Gator. Some versions of this spyware replace banners on web pages visited with those created by the malicious code itself.

One of the most useful thing you can do today is to search Google on "Internet Defender" and click on its Microsoft site.
Here you download the final version of a Microsoft program that blocks spyware and other unwanted applications from your system. It made the jump from beta test to finished release on New Year's Day.

Mobile viruses are becoming more frequent; so are many other security threats to mobile devices and the data they hold. Lately, however, researchers have learned that hackers are now creating mobile spyware, which control SMS messages and allows them to be read by others.