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Talk about hot chrome–Googles new Chrome browser has already grabbed 1% of the browser market in its first day, according to a Web metrics provider and a report in computerworld.com.

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Net Applications has put “Chrome’s total market share at around 1%, less than 24 hours after the browser’s launch, passing rivals such as Opera and Netscape in the process”, according to the report.

Net Applications noted that Chrome “jumped from zero to 0.4% during the hour it was released yesterday. Nine hours later, Chrome accounted for 1% of the browsers used to visit the 40,000 or so sites that the company monitors for clients”, according to the report.

So with 1% of the market, Chrome has already overtaken Opera, which Net Applications measured with a 0.74% share at the end of August.

But Chrome still has a little bit to go if it wants to overtake Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which held a 72.2% share of the browser market last month, said Net Applications earlier this week, while Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari owned 19.2% and 6.4%, respectively, according to the report.

You wouldn’t know it but daily malware attacks are coming down in number. However, what is changing is the way they are being launched and who they are targeting.

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According to Paul Ducklin, head of Technology, Asia-Pacific, Sophos, globally malware attacks are down from 25,000 per day to some 16,000 per day- a 36 per cent decrease.

However notes Ducklin, the number of infected social and blog sites has risen to “about 2 per cent of the total and recently we saw the Google-owned blogger.com being the carrier of some nasty spybot”.

Furthermore, earlier this year Sophos as a company said that 2008 has seen an explosion in malicious software, three times more than in 2007 and that Google-owned Blogger is the most common host for malicious software.

The company also found that Hackers and spammers use social sites like Facebook and MySpace with increasing frequency to spread spyware and viruses.

But says Ducklin, computer users should not be complacent about older forms of PC infection which are still as dangerous today as when they were invented.

“Last year we saw a PC that was being sold by supermarket chain Aldi, which had a pre-loaded virus dating from 1994”.
And it is SMB’s that are bearing the brunt of these attacks as SMBs have fewer resources and many don’t have an employee dedicated full-time to IT security.

And according to another security vendor, McAfee, SMBs could face critical shutdowns in business as a result of weak security.

The company notes that, “every business is hit with spam, which often is laden with malicious data-stealing programs”.
McAfee also said it expects hackers to increasingly go after VoIP phone systems, virtual systems as well as mobile devices.
However Sophos’s Ducklin thinks that the threat to mobile devices is “pretty damn small”.

Although another security vendor Symantec seems to think that potential attacks on things like the iPhone are basically “a hammer looking for a nail”.

The national broadband network (NBN) tender process has claimed its first victim today as Macquarie Group has decided to withdraw its bid, leaving it two contenders left standing for the $12 billion project.

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Telstra and the rival Optus-led consortium Terria (formerly known as G9) are the only remaining bidders prepared to pour money on the national project.

Although Macquarie had already begun preparing its bid for the project, the banks subsidiary, Macquarie Capital Advisers was appointed as a financial consultant for Telstra’s bid for the network last week, thereby setting up a potential conflict of interest.

So in an apparent attempt to avoid an angry and threatened Telstra, Macquarie Group pulled out of the tender process as Telstra and Terria (i.e. Optus) are competing for the $4.7 billion that the Rudd Government has set aside for a public-private partnership (PPP) to provide 98 per cent coverage of the population with broadband connections delivering at least 12 megabits per second.

To add to the confusion, one other group, known as Acacia and backed by the ABC, Leightons and another Macquarie subsidiary, the Macquarie Infrastructure Group, is also bidding for a slice of the NBN tender.

Local broadband provider Internode is offering a free churn procedure until June 30 to draw customers away from rival providers to Internode’s international broadband network.

Internode has also dropped its $39 Fast Transfer fee for the next seven weeks to encourage customers who are dissatisfied with their current broadband provider to move to Internode.

And earlier this week, Internode announced that it had slashed $5 a month across the range of its 8 megabit per second (Mb/s) ADSL broadband plans, now called ADSL Plus. It has also lowered the cost and extended the range of its Business plans.

IT security and control firm Sophos has published its report on the latest trends in spam, and revealed the top twelve spam-relaying countries for the second quarter of 2008.

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The investigation reveals a disturbing rise in the level of email spam travelling across the internet between April-June 2008, and how some spammers are now using Facebook and mobile phones to spread their messages.

By June 2008, research reveals that the level of spam had risen to 96.5 per cent of all business email. Having risen from a figure of 92.3 per cent in the first three months of the year, corporations are now facing the fact that only one in 28 emails is legitimate.

“If your company is on the internet, it’s going to be hard for it to do business unless it has an effective anti-spam defence in place.  Otherwise the amount of junk mail will be swamping legitimate correspondence from your customers and suppliers,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. “It should be remembered also that some spam is not just a nuisance, but malicious in its intent – trying to get you to click on an attached Trojan horse or lead you to a dangerous website.

Organisations need a consolidated anti-spam and anti-malware solution at their gateway, updated around the clock to neutralise the latest internet attacks.”

Top 12 Spam Countries From April to June 2008

 1.    United States            14.9%
 2.    Russia                   7.5%
 3.    Turkey                   6.8%
 4.    China (incl HK)          5.6%
 5.    Brazil                   4.5%
 6=    Poland                  3.6%
 6=    Italy                    3.6%
 8.    South Korea              3.5%
 9=    United Kingdom    3.2%
 9=    Spain                    3.2%
 11.   Germany               3.0%
 12.   Argentina                2.9%

 Rest of World                 37.7%

Australia continues to remains firmly out of the top twelve ranking only 32nd (0.5 per cent), with New Zealand coming further below that in 70th place (0.1 per cent).   

“Between April and June 2008, the computer users of US and Russia retained their shameful first and second places as the top relayers of spam,” continued Cluley. “Much more needs to be done to raise awareness about computer security. These computers are under the remote control of hackers which means they can be used not only for sending a tidalwave of spam, but also potentially steal banking details and credit card information for the purposes of identity theft.”

Also retaining a place on the leader’s podium of shame was Turkey, with a marked increase in spam since the same period last year – rising from ninth place and 2.9 per cent in the second quarter of 2007, to third place and 6.8 per cent this year.

A new addition to the chart this quarter is Argentina, which has knocked France out of the chart to take 12th place, and which is now responsible for relaying 2.9 per cent of the world’s spam email.

Sophos says that spammers are increasingly using networking websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to send their unwanted links to online stores and bogus lottery and financial scams.

However Sophos says the level of Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn spam is still dwarfed by email spam, but there is a growing trend for spammers to use other techniques to spread their messages.

Viral networks and social sites such as MySpace and Facebook have created a fertile ground for predators, scammers and identity thieves, according to an Australian information security expert.

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CQR Consulting Information Security Consultant Jody Melbourne said the “explosive viral growth” of social networking and media sites had attracted the interest of many business-minded people.

“These new, unregulated platforms are attracting interest from people ranging from entrepreneurs to unscrupulous scammers, spammers and snake-oil salesmen,” he said. “As with any medium of electronic communication or data-sharing, these social networks are being regularly poked and prodded by hackers and identity thieves.”

Although many such sites are simply for social networking, personal profile, chat and sending messages and sharing photos and videos with friends, LinkedIn for example is currently the most popular social site for business networking and recruitment.
Melbourne said the social features being added to major services like Google and Microsoft Live would soon bring social networking capabilities to millions of new users. “For many users, the larger social networks are fast becoming an all-in-one service for communicating,” he said.

“The problem is this rapid, widespread adoption of social networking sites has a number of dangers.”

 He said people often failed to consider that many employers researched potential applicants online. “Job seekers are being turned down for employment because of inappropriate or incriminating information and pictures on their social network profiles,” he said.

Over $980 million was lost as a result of personal fraud according to the first National Personal Fraud Survey, by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which was released today.

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By definition, personal fraud included credit or bank card fraud, identity theft (includes the unauthorised use of a person’s personal details), and the following selected scams; lotteries, pyramid schemes, phishing and related scams, financial advice, chain letters and advance fee fraud.

The survey, conducted in 2007, asked people aged 15 and over about their experiences relating to personal fraud incidents in the preceding 12 months. The survey found that 453,100 Australians lost on average $2,160 as a result of personal fraud.

Other results from the survey include:

A total of 806,000 Australians reported they were victims of at least one incident of personal fraud in the previous 12 months.
This represented some 5 per cent of the population aged 15 years and over.

Half a million Australians experienced a form of identity fraud. The majority 383,300 (77 per cent) were victims of credit or bankcard fraud; identity theft accounted for the balance.

Nearly 6 million Australians (36 per cent) were exposed to a range of selected scams; that is they received, viewed and/or read an unsolicited invitation, request or notification designed to obtain personal information or money or obtain a financial benefit by deceptive means.

And almost 330,000 people fell victim to at least one type of scam by responding to or engaging with the unsolicited offer. The three main categories of selected scams were: lotteries (84,100 victims), pyramid schemes (70,900) and phishing and related scams (57,800).