Cyber criminals are distributing "New Friend Request" e-mails to users of social-networking websites in the hope that they would gain something this festive season.

Gunter Ollmann, Vice-President of Research, Damballa, recently wrote on a blog about fresh updates of widely used kit that built the botnet namely Zeus. The updates, according to Ollmann, are helping in the continuation of threat which is escalating in spite of its existence for sometime now, as reported by Securitywatch.eweek on December 16, 2009.

A court in Brisbane has fined $210,000 to a man named Lance Thomas Atkinson from Sunshine Coast over charges that he planned the biggest Internet spam operation in the world. The spam operation dispatched 10 Billion e-mails per day.

Internet security company, Avira, has released a list of top brands that suffered maximum number of phishing assaults in 2009. As per the list, PayPal experienced the highest number of phishing attacks at 32205, followed by Chase Bank and eBay with 25901 and 18738 attacks respectively.