Vista: a major factor in malware evolution

Microsoft's new operating system Windows Vista will be a key factor in the development of malicious code over the next few years, according to predictions by an anti-virus company.

In an annual report published by Kaspersky Labs, the company predicted that Vista will play a deciding role in the evolution of malware over the next few years.

"Although it's unlikely that there will be major changes in the near future, this new product will definitely establish future trends," the report's authors said.

The report also said that there would also be a significant increase in the number of malicious programs for other operating systems, first and foremost for OS X, and then for Unix systems.

"Malicious users are also likely to examine the possibilities of malicious code for gaming consoles like PlayStation and Nintendo more extensively," the report said. "The ever-increasing number of such devices and their new abilities to communicate both with each other and with the internet may attract the attention of virus writers."

The authors said that at present such attacks would be limited to proof-of-concept and cyber-vandalism.

Kaspersky said that the number of targeted attacks on mid-sized and large businesses will increase this year and ransomware, which extorts money from someone by encrypting data on a computer until a payment is made, will be one of the main ways by which criminals will profit from its victims. It said that Microsoft Office files will serve as one of the main infection vectors, as will the vulnerabilities in this particular product.

The report painted a gloomy picture on the spam front and saw no end to the misery that junk mail puts users through.

"2007 will witness spammers continuing to develop graphical spam; and develop the technology which uses a template to automatically generate multiple versions of a coherent text within a single mass mailing. They may also employ linguistic algorithms, rather than simply using their intuition, as has been the case in the past," it said.

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