Virus wars: fewer attacks, new threats

Security professionals have fought an ongoing battle with malicious-code writers since the development of the first major Internet worm in 1988. However, the battle recently took an interesting turn: The number of reported attacks, as well as the losses they caused, dropped for the first time. The bad news is that malware writers have developed some new, significant, and hard-to-defeat techniques this year, forcing antivirus-software vendors to look for new ways to combat these threats.