Archive notice: This article was originally published on May 9, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
According to Kaspersky Lab analyst Alexander Gostev, the first quarter of 2008 brought several troubling developments. New malicious programs appeared in ever greater numbers and at ever shorter intervals, while virus authors resumed technical development after a period of relative stagnation.
One example is the bootkit, a dangerous combination of rootkit and boot-virus technologies. Malware authors are also increasingly adopting methods previously associated with anti-virus products. Botnets continue to be used for spam distribution and attacks, while vulnerabilities in applications such as FlashGet have been exploited to install Trojans.
Mobile malware is likewise evolving on Symbian, Windows Mobile, J2ME and iPhone platforms. In China, the InfoJack program was reported to have infected mobile phones.
