November 2, 2009 6:00 AM PST

Phishing, worms spike this year, say Microsoft and McAfee

by Elinor Mills

Scammers are targeting social networks with phishing scams and relying more heavily on worms and Trojans to attack computers, according to security trend reports to be released Monday by Microsoft and McAfee.

Phishing attacks saw a big spike in May and June, primarily because of campaigns targeting social-networking sites, according to Microsoft's report covering the first half of 2009. Gaming sites, portals, and Web sites of banks and retailers were also popular targets for phishing attacks, the report said.

Trojans, including rogue security software, remained the most prevalent category of threats, while Microsoft statistics show that worms rose from fifth place in the second half of last year to become the second most prevalent category, led by Conficker and followed by Taterf, which targets multiplayer online role-playing games.

More information:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10387768-245.html

Microsoft: Worms are most prevalent security problem
By Jeremy Kirk

November 2, 2009 10:01 AM ET


IDG News Service - The Conficker worm continues to be one of the most prevalent threats facing PCs running Windows, according to a new security report published by Microsoft.

For the first six months of the year, Microsoft found that more than 5 million computers were infected with Conficker, according to its latest Security Intelligence Report.
Conficker spreads either by exploiting a vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows Server service, through infected removable media or brute-forcing weak passwords on other PCs.

Conficker alarmed Microsoft so much when it appeared that Microsoft issued an emergency patch in October 2008 for the software vulnerability that allowed it to spread rapidly.
The worm is still circulating, mainly in enterprises, said Vinny Gullotto, general manager of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center. Due to its password-cracking ability, if Conficker gets on one PC in a company, it can often then rapidly spread.

More:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/914...ecurity_problem