Malware

There are other things more depressing than lacking a date for Valentine's Day. For starters, how about getting stung by a trojan disguised as an e-card celebrating the annual romantic holiday?

After a brief hiatus, new variants have appeared in the wild of Trojan.Mebroot, a rogue rootkit discovered in December attacking the Windows Master Boot Record (MBR), Symantec has warned.

The latest fake Microsoft Update page laced with malware comes with a sinister twist: a portion of its URL contains the URL for the software giant's actual update site, with a period substituted for a forward slash.

What is it?A computer's DNS settings help it map hostnames to IP addresses. A computer can be reconfigured to use these malicious DNS servers through malware or a malicious website's script code. Windows systems are most often at risk, although recently DNSChanger attacks have affected OS X and Linux, too.

A group of security companies and anti-virus testers have formed an organization dedicated to creating a universally accepted standard for evaluating anti-malware products.

Storm Worm is no longer the biggest spam-generating botnet on the block. Researchers in the U.K. say Mega-D, the latest contender for the spam menace crown, now is accounting for nearly one-third of all unwanted email.

Critical ActiveX control flaws have been detected in the Yahoo! Music Jukebox, which like vulnerabilities reported last week in MySpace and Facebook image uploaders, may permit attackers to take control of users' PCs.

Malicious banner advertisements delivering malware have appeared on two popular websites, travel planning site Expedia.com and music-download site Rhapsody.com.