The use of shortened Internet addresses has been in the increase in the past. Such services have been found useful by cybercriminals to get people to click on an inconspicuous website that may actually contain malicious software that attack users' PC.

Cybercriminals are also using "heavy artillery" in their arsenal to attack social networks; authors of one of today's most complex malicious programs -- the TDSS rootkit -- continue to perfect their creation. In December, the latest modification of the rootkit, TDL-4, started exploiting the vulnerability CVE-2010-3338 that was discovered in June 2010 while analyzing the Stuxnet worm.

NEW TECHNIQUES IN FAKE ANTIVIRUS

As for fake antiviruses, Kaspersky Lab reported that two fake antivirus programs made it to Kaspersky Lab's Top 20 malicious programs in December, making them the first of their kind to land in the list.

One fake antivirus, Trojan.HTML.Fraud.ct, generates an Internet page that resembles a My Computer window that makes it look very legitimate. The fake antivirus "scans" the PC and allegedly detects a malware. It then tricks the user to purchase the "full version" of the antivirus.