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This year marks the 40th anniversary of Creeper, the world's first computer virus. From Creeper to Stuxnet, the last four decades saw the number of malware instances boom from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010. Besides sheer quantity, viruses, which were originally used as academic proof of concepts, quickly turned into geek pranks, then evolved into cybercriminal tools. By 2005, the virus scene had been monetized, and virtually all viruses were developed with the sole purpose of making money via more or less complex business models. In the following story, FortiGuard Labs looks at the most significant computer viruses over the last 40 years and explains their historical significance. 1971: Creeper: catch me if you can While theories on self-replicating automatas were developed by genius mathematician Von Neumann in the early 50s, the first real computer virus was released "in lab" in 1971 by an employee of a company working on building ARPANET, the ...

Kaspersky Lab has released its forecast for the IT threat landscape for this decade (2011 – 2020). Kaspersky bases this forecast on an analysis of the main changes and issues in the sphere of IT security over the past decade, as well as emerging trends in the development of personal computers, mobile phones and operating systems. According to the company's analysts, the most significant trends of the last ten years (2001-2010) were: Mobility and miniaturisation . Smaller and smaller devices can now access the Internet from virtually any point on the globe; making wireless networks the most popular method of connecting to the web. The transformation of virus writing  into cybercrime (Crime committed using a computer and the internet to steal a person's identity, sell contraband, stalk victims or disrupt organisations with malevolent programs). Windows maintaining its leading position  as a vendor of operating systems for personal computers. Intense competition in the mobil...

A prominent security researcher said he doubts Microsoft's take down of the Waledac botnet would have any impact on spam levels, as the company claimed. "Waledac just is not a hugely prolific spammer," said Joe Stewart, director of malware analysis at SecureWorks and a noted botnet researcher. "So I don't think it's going to affect spam [volume]. What it does do lately... what it's used for, is to install rogue antivirus software." The UK-based anti-spam service Spamhaus echoed Stewart today. "If [Microsoft's take-down] did affect spam, we haven't noticed," said Richard Cox, the chief information officer at Spamhaus. Like Stewart, Cox also dismissed Waledac's threat as a spam engine. "Waledac was not a high threat, it's less than 1% of the spam traffic," Cox said. "What we're worried about is Zeus, which is a far more damaging botnet, which is creating a substantial amount of spam." Postini, t...