Latest security threat report by security vendor defines trends for 2012

The hack on LG Australia’s website in October is wake up call for local business, according to a pair of security professionals.

Botnet criminals have flooded the Internet with a surge of attachment spam in recent weeks in a desperate attempt to rebuild a spam-distribution industry under pressure, security experts have suggested.

Spam volumes are down sharply on their level a year ago but cybercriminals continue to hit home with easy-to-exploit vulnerabilities for Adobe and Java, the latest half-year report from security company M86 Security has said.

A large network of hacked computers called Rustock, which was responsible for a great volume of spam, has shut down, perhaps as a result of another coordinated take down by security researchers.

A new phishing scam that targets bank and PayPal passwords and other consumer data that criminals use to loot private accounts is designed to beat security built in to Firefox and Chrome Web browsers.

ISP Virgin Media is now using organisations such as The Shadowserver Foundation to work out which of its customers might be part of botnets spreading the dangerous Zeus online banking Trojan.

Distributors are being forced to question their role in the cloud computing model as channel partners increasingly scramble to re-evaluate business models.