The Syrian fascination with using malware has even extended to .

The regime had previously resorted to the extreme measure of but seems to have realised that surveillance offers greater intelligence possibilities.

As such the attacks depend on the PC being poorly defended or the user open to social engineering. The MACAddressChanger.exe and Xtreme RAT apps are easily detected by an antivirus programme that monitors IM. So far such tactics are aggressive rather than sophisticated.

Also this week, French researchers have gone public over a Skype security flaw that could compromise users' IP addresses they claim was reported to the company in November 2010. This hole remains unpatched.