DrWeb anti-virus software provider compiled a report of the most interesting malware for April. Android OS related viruses turned to be the most popular platform for malicious applications among hackers.

Now Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool can detect and clean the fourth-biggest threat in automated program's history, which dates back to at least 2005.

A Windows Trojan has been adapted to infect Mac OS machines, according to the latest report by a security firm Sophos. The malware is being under development to set a backdoor on Macs with hackers behind the scheme seeking for potential buyers. The author called the malware BlackHole RAT while security experts dubbed it as MusMinim. It is a version of Windows Trojan called darkComet. Net security firm Sophos describes the malware as "very basic", while even its author characterizes the malware as a work in progress.

In 2010 botnets used to steal banking credentials and other purposes of cyber crooks affected more than 7 times as many victims as the previous year, according to a report by a security firm. Damballa who released the report says that the increase was driven by improvements in DIY botnet construction kits using which criminals could construct new networks. Upgraded infection technology targets a hard drive's master boot record and changes the machine's boot options also played role.

According to separate studies a great number of users still remain infected with PC malware even though their machines have security protections such as anti-virus software. One study by European Union statistics agency EUROSTAT shows that 31% of PC users had malicious software in spite of the fact that 84% of users were running security apps including anti-virus, anti-spam and firewall. Besides, 3% of respondents also reported financial losses because of farming or phishing attacks, while a further 4 per cent reported privacy violations involving data sent online.

According to the finding of Seculert there is a new combination of two pieces of advanced online banking malware circulating on the Internet now. The virus appears to be a beta version of a piece of malware that has bits of both Zeus and SpyEye, says Aviv Raff, CTO and cofounder of Seculert.

A security vendor Seculert has found that a banking malware Carberp that has been tracked by researchers since its appearance last October is adding more sophisticated capabilities. Carberp targets Windows OS running machines and can steal a range of data as well as disguise itself as legitimate Windows files and remove antivirus software. The malware is considered as a rival to Zeus.

Researchers have found that at least 2,500 victims paid to hackers so that they would free them from the worm that had sized users’ PCs. A fast-spreading virus identified by Trend Micro as Worm_Rixobot.A has been spreading in recent weeks using infected porn websites, instant messaging applications and even infected USB drives.

The chairman of the world's largest provider of security software for corporate servers made a statement that Android-based smartphones are more vulnerable to cyber attacks than the iPhones. The statement comes less a week after Trend Micro released its Mobile Security app for Android phones. "Android is open source, which means the hacker can also understand the underlying architecture and source code,"" Chairman Steve Chang told Bloomberg Businessweek.

Supporting the prognosis made by McAfee, Symantec's MessageLabs Intelligence: 2010 Annual Security Report reveal worrying malware trends in 2010 and makes gloomy forecast for 2011.

Another iteration of the infamous ZeuS Trojan was developed to be run only on high-end machines with fast performance. Security researchers usually deploy automation and virtualisation technologies to cope with the growing volume of malware spewed out by cybercrooks every day. Knowing this cyber crooks use virtual machine detection and anti-debugging code in their creations. This increases the time for security analysts to detect, develop and distribute anti-virus updates.

Talking at the opening of the Information Security Summit 2010, Agnes Mak, executive director of the Hong Kong Productivity Council, said that organizations in Hong Kong need more consolidated efforts and collaboration to wrestle security threats. Last week the Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre (HKCERT) reported that the number of hacking and phishing cases were up 34 percent year-on-year in the first 10 months of the year.

What cyber threats businesses and consumers should expect in 2011? This question was discussed by WebProNews with Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence Sr. Analyst at Symantec Hosted Services.

A new Trojan marked as "a serious enemy" is threatening corporate networks as it can be used as a corporate spying tool, warned the Internet security specialist BitDefender. The security vendor stated that Trojan.Spy.YEK sniffs for critical data and archives that may hold private information and sends them back to the attacker. It is a serious threat because the Trojan features both spying and backdoor capabilities, say BitDefender Malware Researchers Doina Cosovan and Octavian Minea.

New generation of malware called Stealing Reality is expected to bring more harm to users with long lasting implications. The problem is in that the malware steals "behavioral pattern" and a user cannot change his/her behavior and habits absolutely even if they change their login credentials and other personal information.