The dark corners of shady Internet bars just became a whole lot safer thanks to Microsoft. The boys and girls in Redmond noticed a disturbing trend towards the end of 2010; the rate of infection due to malware spread via Autorun was skyrocketing. Rather than shrugging their shoulders and telling Symantec to deal with it, the company released an update in February that disabled most Autorun functions on Windows PCs. Four months later, the results are in – malware authors looking to slip your computer a mickey via infected flash drives had better start looking at Linux instead.
Privacy advocates and seedy characters on the edge of Internet legality alike use Bitcoins as their virtual currency of choice. The anonymous, decentralized P2P nature of Bitcoins lets you transfer money without ever having to contact a bank or even know the true identity of the person on the other end of the transaction. Recent events have dragged the shadowy currency into the light of public scrutiny, and now its squirming users have another headache to deal with: a trojan designed specifically to pilfer your Bitcoin wallet.
One of the most popular tricks in the Malware Handbook is to fool users into installing fake antivirus software. You've seen the bogus warnings before, the ones telling you your PC is infected with viruses, and all you have to do to restore order is download and install whatever fake antivirus software is on your screen. Savvy PC users recognize this as a scam designed to get users to unwittingly install real malware under the guise of a helpful product, and the reason it still works is because malware writers keep finding new and creative ways of dishing up their bogus software.
Windows PCs don't exactly have a reputation for security, but Microsoft's trying to change that. When smug know-it-alls claim that Windows PCs have more viruses than a public toilet, Microsoft points to the PatchGuard driver signing system on 64-bit Windows as their way of saying "Nuh-uh!" PatchGuard keeps the baddies from getting high-level privileges on Windows machines. Bad news: Kapersky's reporting that a new malware program that targets Windows 64-bit users has figured a way around the protection.
There are a million different ways malware can be delivered to your PC (or so it seems), yet the easiest way to spread foul files is to go phishing. It doesn't require exploiting any vulnerabilities or coding clever workarounds, and instead puts the onus on PC users to educate themselves on safe computing practices, a fundamental skill still largely in short supply. It's also the method Skype scammers are using, only the bait has changed.
Let's pretend that rather than being a massively successful technology company, Apple was actually, you know, an apple. The bright, shiny red kind the old lady down the street hands out on Halloween. It looks really delicious on the outside, but deep down inside, there's a terrible secret lurking. If Apple is an apple, Mac Defender is its hidden razor. And not even half a day after Apple finally stopped twiddling its thumbs and released a patch to combat the malware, Mac Defender's authors released a new version that's already bypassing the new protections.
Google is confident that its cloud-based Chrome OS will change the computer security landscape beyond recognition. That the many layers of security built in to the operating system will be enough to render third-party anti-virus solutions useless.That you will no longer have to “spend hours fighting your computer to set it up and keep it up to date.” But not everyone - least of all computer security companies - is convinced. 
It's true, we've been giving Apple a lot of grief recently over the whole Mac Defender thing. While it's fun to watch Mac fanatics squirm so much over a fairly straightforward malware infection, if we're being honest, the only reason us Windows users are so cynical and jaded in the first place is because we've all dealt with a nasty infection or two ourselves. But just how prevalent is malware on Microsoft systems? A post on Microsoft's Threat Research & Response Blog earlier in the week gives us a glimpse at some of the numbers.
Not a day after Apple finally acknowledged the Mac Defender trojan, the original malware author has changed up the attack, making it even harder to prevent infection. The main impediment before was that users had to enter their administrator password, but the new variant no longer requires that. It's a brave new world for Mac users, folks.
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