Security company McAfee, Inc. says in its year-end report that in 2004, enterprises were most affected by bots, adware and vulnerabilities in existing software, while consumers were most hit by adware and exploits taking advantage of vulnerabilities.

The company's list of the top 10 malicious threats to affect both enterprise and home users worldwide was compiled by the company's Anti-virus and Vulnerability Emergency Response Team (AVERT).

For 2005, AVERT says it anticipates that adware and unwanted content, transmitted via e-mail and the Web, will continue to increase in 2005, with programs becoming increasingly complex. Threats will be combined with content such as spam and phishing.

Successful phishing schemes will continue to increase, McAfee says, due to a general lack of consumer awareness. Additionally, the number of exploits that attack discovered vulnerabilities will increase as more vulnerabilities are discovered. Today's programs are evolving rapidly and could at some point succeed mass mailers, the dominant threat of the past six years.

The 2004 list in alphabetical order:
1) Adware-180
2) Adware-Gator
3) Exploit-ByteVerify
4) Exploit-MhtRedir
5) JS/Noclose
6) W32/Bagle
7) W32/Mydoom
8) W32/Netsky
9) W32/Sasser
10) W32/Sdbot (family including sdbot, gaobot, polybot, spybot)

Computer virus attacks reaching a medium risk assessment or higher have dramatically increased in 2004, compared to 2003. McAfee assessed 46 threats as a medium risk or higher compared to 2003's total of 20 threats reaching that same risk level. Most of this was due to the Netsky-Bagle war.

Within the first half of 2004, 50 new computer viruses of varying risk assessments were discovered daily. And by the end of 2004, detection for 17,000 new malware threats were added to AVERT's growing database of threats.

Threats using vulnerable systems in 2004 added up to more than 380, exceeding totals in 2003 by approximately 50 per cent.

More than 2 million detections for various types of exploits were found on machines managed by McAfee, a number that will grow due to the continuing interest by hackers to exploit unpatched consumer systems.
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Source : GlobeTechnology

LOL, I've had everything listed above!

Thing is, a company needs to be able to remove ALL of them! I currently use SpySweeper, XoftSpy, and AdAwarePro, because each of them miss something.

When someone in higher places starts getting smart and starts putting these people in jail, it will stop... basically until then, it's free rein.

(in reply to SiliconFreak)

Not only companies needs to be able to remove them all - We ALL need such capability!

Jail time is the cure?
Not until longer sentences than "few months backyard holidays" we usually hear given IF more than slap to wrist is even given...

(in reply to MP3Mogul)