Email Virus Count Drops
About one in 91 email messages harbors a virus or other form of malicious software, down from one in 35 last year, according to Graham Cluley at Sophos. Although the numbers may have gone down, hackers are not giving up. Cluley says they are shifting their strategies so they will not be noticed and writing different types of malicious software such as Trojan horse programs, which account for roughly 81 percent of malicious programs on the Internet. Spam is no longer being sent out in large batches, but instead victims are more carefully targeted, says Cluley. The motivation is financial gain. Consumer computers are usually prime targets because they often lack antivirus software. "Home users are much more laid back about virus protection," says Cluley. This year's most common malware has been Sober-Z, a worm found in an email supposedly from the FBI or CIA that claims a user had accessed illegal Web sites.
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