The amount of computers nefariously “hijacked” by malicious hackers to spew out spam and spread viruses has soared almost 30% in the twelve months, according to security firm Symantec.
The security bigwigs reported that more than six million bot-infected computers were detected during the second half of 2006, with over a third of all computer attacks originating from US-based PCs.
Despite this growth, the number of bot ‘command-and-control’ servers shrunk by around 25% to 4,700, pointing to a more centralised system for unleashing bot-tastic attacks.
Symantec blames the rise in infected computers on the growing online population of countries like China and Spain, with Ollie Whitehouse, senior consulting services director, commenting, “There is almost an educational curve that the users and service providers have to go through. Unfortunately when certain countries go through rapid increases in connectivity and availability of technology that curve is not always kept up.”
The company also noted that ‘underground economy servers’ were being being used by dodgy perps to flog stolen personal information, including credit cards, bank cards, PIN numbers and other forms of ID.
Just over half of all identity theft-related data breaches were also found to have resulted from the loss or theft of computer hardware (like a laptop, USB memory stick, removable storage).
“As cyber criminals become increasingly malicious, they continue to evolve their attack methods to become more complex and sophisticated in order to prevent detection,” warned Arthur Wong, senior vice president, Symantec Security Response and Managed Services.
“End users, whether consumers or enterprises, need to ensure proper security measures to prevent an attacker from gaining access to their confidential information, causing financial loss, harming valuable customers, or damaging their own reputation,” he added.
Sony is gearing up to launch a rival to popular online virtual world 
Until then, Miglia has been bundling Elgato’s TVEye software with their digital TV DVB-T/Freeview/TNT tuners.
A pretty staggering number, even when you realise that it includes all of the downloads and possibly all upgrades of the software (* We’re in the process of checking this with Skype HQ).
We rather liked the nifty 
Full Windows Vista support has been bolted on, with the authors claiming that the program now comes with “many thousands of new senses, synonyms and clarifications.”
Mobile games are starting to rake in big revenues in the States as perambulating punters warm to the idea of downloading games for their phones.
Although you might imagine that mobile gaming would be the near-exclusive preserve of socially challenged males aged 25 to 36, Telephia says that it’s the ladies who are the hottest to trot, with 65 percent of U.S. mobile game buyers being of the female persuasion.
Like hungry puppies with sharp teeth, Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari Web browsers continue to chew and gnaw away at the juicy legs of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE).
“After a minor hiccup in January, Firefox seems to be back on the offensive in February,” said the fabulously named Vincent Vizzaccaro, Net Applications’ executive vice president of marketing and strategic relationships.
By way of a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the ever-popular Ms Pac-Man video game, Namco are releasing a version of it to run on fifth-generation iPods, made available to punters via the iTunes store.
As ever, Wikipedia provides 
Once the biggest, baddest, mean mo’fo name in the world of web piracy, BitTorrent is going legit today with the launch of a digital store backed by a string of big name content partners.
The Emotion Engine will instead be handled in what they call, “a new combination of hardware and software emulation which will enable PS3 to be compatible with a broad range of original PlayStation (PS) titles and a limited range of PlayStation2 (PS2) titles.”
Some additional PS2 titles will become compatible on the PS3 system through regular downloadable firmware updates, which will be made available through the PLAYSTATION®Network, from http://www.playstation.com or via PS3 game discs, with the first update planned for the launch date of the 23rd March 2007.