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.