“As Apple has increased its share of the computer market, hackers have become more interested in developing exploits for its software vulnerabilities. Like Microsoft, Apple must issue security patches from time to time, but the two companies have very different distribution approaches for their security fixes,” Jim Offner reports for MacNewsWorld.

“‘Software update’ is common parlance among regular computer users,” Offner reports. “More than likely, an ‘update’ is a ‘patch’ — a code modification designed to protect against the latest virus, worm or other security threat.”

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front said it restored its Web site late Friday after it was defaced by hackers.

Mohagher Iqbal, a senior MILF leader, earlier said their Web site (URL http://www.luwaran.com) was messed up by a still unidentified group. “Our Web site was hacked by the enemy,” he said without further elaborating.

The Web site was off line since early Friday and its mirror site http://www.luwaran.net has been redirected Saturday to a forum on this URL http://forums.luwaran.net. Television giant GMA 7 reported that the MILF Web site had several photos of pigs, animals considered unclean by Muslims.

Microsoft Corp. today called its first month of predicting whether hackers will create exploit code for its bugs a success — even though the company got its forecast right less than half the time.

“I think we did really well,” said Mike Reavey, group manager at the Microsoft Security Research Center (MSRC), when asked for a postmortem evaluation of the first cycle of the team’s Exploitability Index. “Four of the issues that we said where consistent exploit code was likely did have exploit code appear over the first two weeks. And another key was that in no case did we rate something too low.”

An update for the AVG virus scanner released yesterday contained an incorrect virus signature, which led it to think user32.dll contained the Trojan Horses PSW.Banker4.APSA or Generic9TBN. AVG then recommended deleting this file; this causes the affected systems to either stop booting or go into a continuous reboot cycle. So far, the problem only appears to affect Windows XP, but there is no guarantee that other versions of Windows don’t have the same issue.

The original designer of the internet’s Domain Name System (DNS) is in the UK to discuss industry responses to security flaws recently uncovered in its handling of internet protocol (IP) addresses.

The DNS vulnerability, first proven by researcher Dan Kamsinky in July 2008, highlighted how criminals can potentially redirect unsuspecting victims to fake websites, even when they type in a genuine web address.

The flaw has since been exploited to poison the servers that translate domain names into internet protocol (IP) addresses, giving malware another attack vector to infect user PCs with malicious code or intercept and edit email.

Up to 3,910 new types of computer viruses were recorded in Vietnam in October, including 3,905 of internationalorigin and 5 of domestic origin.

According to the leading networks security agency in Vietnam, BKIS Network Security Centre, the bugs attacked more than 6.2 million computers in Vietnam during October. The most popular virus is X97M.XFSic, which infected over 73,000 computers.

BKIS said in October, 50 websites of Vietnamese companies and agencies were hacked. Of them, 24 sites were attacked by Vietnamese hackers and 26 by foreign hackers. BKIS also unveiled serious errors in websites of 11 businesses and government agencies.

Microsoft last week said it will release only two security updates on Tuesday — down from the 11 issued in October’s mammoth Patch Tuesday — to fix bugs in Windows and Office.

One of the two will be rated “critical,” Microsoft’s highest threat ranking, while the other will be tagged as “important,” the next-lowest rating. Both of the updates will address vulnerabilities that can be used to execute remote code, a description that generally means hackers could leverage the bugs in order to plant their own malicious code on vulnerable PCs, often by convincing users to open a file attachment or tricking them into visiting a rogue Web site.

Computer infections with viruses by way of USB flash memory drives are spreading in Japan, according to a Trend Micro Inc survey released Saturday. Based on the finding, the Tokyo-based virus-scanning software company called on PC users to take precautions when sharing data with others via USB memory sticks.

A USB flash memory drive is a portable data-storage device that has become popular as an alternative to a floppy disk. Equipped with an integrated interface, the device can store, rewrite and remove files. It is much smaller and weighs less than a floppy disk though its storage capacity is larger—up to 128 gigabytes. According to the company’s monthly survey, USB-mediated infections with Autorun, a typical computer virus, totaled 143 in August. The number rose to 347 in September and 471 in October.

Security researchers say they’ve developed a way to partially crack the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption standard used to protect data on many wireless networks.

The attack, described as the first practical attack on WPA, will be discussed at the PacSec conference in Tokyo next week. There, researcher Erik Tews will show how he was able to crack WPA encryption, in order to read data being sent from a router to a laptop computer. The attack could also be used to send bogus information to a client connected to the router.

For years, the Sinowal Trojan has stymied efforts by antivirus vendors and security experts to hunt it down. In the meantime, it has gone about its business of stealing credentials from about 500,000 bank accounts, according to security experts.

Antivirus vendor Authentium thinks it might have built a better mousetrap that will protect users against the Trojan, also known as Torpig and Mebroot. The technique uses reverse sandboxing, chief technology officer Ray Dickenson told InternetNews.com.