Sunbelt Software, an important provider of Windows security software, today released the top ten most prevalent spyware threats for the month of December 2006. The results are based on monthly scans performed by Sunbelt's award-winning antispyware product CounterSpy™. The WinAntiVirusPro threat shows up for the first time in the top ten lists and is a rogue antispyware program that purports to scan and detect malware or other problems on the computer.

Once again, Panda Software has released its annual list of those nasty codes. Gladly there were no Code Reds in the group. None of them were brutal enough to have caused any serious epidemics. But without further excitement, here are this year's 'winners':

Two flaw hunters, Kevin Finisterre and the pseudonymous LMH, say that each day in January, they will feature a security hole in Apple Computer's Mac OS X or applications for that operating system. Like previous efforts, which concerned Web browser and kernel flaws, the "Month of Apple Bugs" is meant to improve security, the two state on their Web site. Flaws that are publicly disclosed will get fixed quickly, they argue.

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.

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.

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.

IBM declared it has joined with BitDefender to include that company's antivirus and antispyware technologies into its Internet Security Systems division's endpoint security products.

McAfee's Avert Labs has exposed a new virus in the wild, W32/Realor.worm that modifies all of the Real Media files it comes across.

Geok Meng Ong talked about quite a few worms targeting media players on the most recent post to McAfee's Avert Labs blog. One was prominent for its behavior - W32/Realor.worm, a virus that brings delivers web pages to a Real Player user.

This week's report presents a series of Microsoft vulnerabilities, MS06-066, MS06-067, MS06-068, MS06-069, MS06-070, and MS06-071, the TelnetOn.A worm and the Briz.S Trojan.

Bulletins MS06-067 to MS06-071 refer to a number of critical vulnerabilities, including a cumulative update for Internet Explorer (MS06-067), a flaw in Flash Player (MS06-069) and another in XML Core Services (MS06-071). The MS06-066 bulletin is classified as "important" and is about problems in the client service for NetWare.

During a telephone discussion with reporters yesterday, outgoing Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, while publicize the new security features of Windows Vista, which was released to manufacturing yesterday, told a reporter that the system's new lockdown features are so capable and thorough that he was comfortable with his own seven-year-old son using Vista without antivirus software installed.