A recent report on Trojan email attacks in the UK also highlights the emerging trend away from mass-mailing worms and viruses to more targeted ones. The UK's National Infrastructure Security Co-Ordination Center released a report disclosing that more than 300 government departments and businesses were targeted by a continuing series of email attacks designed to covertly gather sensitive and economically valuable information.

Unlike traditional phishing and mass-mailing worms, the attackers appear to be going after specific individuals who have access to commercially or economically privileged information, the report said.

Unique and one-off

The attacks involved the use of emails containing Trojans or links to websites containing Trojan files. Once installed on a user's system, Trojans covertly run in the background and perform a variety of functions, including collecting usernames, passwords and system information, scanning of drives, and uploading of documents and data to remote computers.

The report highlights how hackers are tailoring their attacks to go after specific high-value targets rather than launching mass-mailing worms and viruses, said Mark Sunner, CTO at MessageLabs, the UK-based email security services firm.