A report security made public by MessageLabs Ltd. claims that premeditated and targeted attacks using Trojan horses are on the increase. Although active on a much smaller stage than mass attacks, such attempts have a better chance of success and of avoiding detections. The tailored attacks aim to gather valuable confidential data and other sensitive information from specially selected targets. Such specialized attempts have a frequency 14 times bigger than similar attacks in 2005, meaning that they occur once a day rather than once ever two weeks, as they did a year ago.

Paul Wood, senior analyst for MessageLabs has commented upon the findings of the study that was carried out on the company's 14,000 business customers worldwide that enjoy its filter e-mail and Internet traffic products.

Wood said the methods of attack are evolving in response to an increase in online security solutions, but that the security medium will also have to adapt to targeted Trojans. "It's very much more difficult for the cybercriminals to get through organizations' defenses in the same way that they would have done four or five years ago," he said.

Another form of attacks that are on the rise is the exploitation of vulnerabilities in existing applications, as proof-of-concept for such flaws is more and more widely published on the Internet, and as the amount of the vulnerabilities discovered every day is also on the increase.