More focused

One trend that Sophos has observed of late is that attacks are becoming more focused.

In China, for example, more than 50 percent of computer malware is designed to steal passwords mostly for online games. In Brazil, on the other hand, 78 percent is designed to steal banking passwords or 'phishing.'

Sophos says it has detected a rise in Christmas-related spam.

A very recent spam email the company detected contains links to pornographic videos, which prompts Mozilla Firefox users to switch to Microsoft Internet Explorer then, once the user clicks on the link, a Trojan horse is loaded onto the PC, taking advantage of an IE vulnerability.