Summary: Menaces and unpleasant 'niceties' that only affect users of Windows this week

● Russian cops cuff 10 ransomware Trojan suspects [via]

PCs infected by the WinLock Trojan at the centre of the scam were rendered unusable because the malware disabled key Windows components. More embarrassingly pornographic images were displayed on compromised machines, IDG adds.

● Polymorphic ransomware tops malware charts

Ransomware variant TotalSecurity is topping the malware charts, according to the latest threat report from security firm Fortinet.

August was the biggest comeback month since March for TotalSecurity, which locks out applications and data, and then demands a ransom to restore access.

● Microsoft Releases 'Fix It' for DLL Hole

The DLL security vulnerability first grabbed headlines in August when a Slovenian security research firm pointed out that, under some circumstances, a malicious hacker could deploy a booby-trapped DLL file into a directory where Windows will load it, potentially granting the attacker control over the system. But it later surfaced that a U.S. security researcher had warned Microsoft about the DLL issue almost a year before, and had even published an academic paper on the threat last month.

● Google Code hosting malware-spreading project

Google Code's project hosting feature has occasionally been used by malicious individuals for storing and spreading malware.

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After this discovery was made public, Google removed the offending project. But this instance shows that the company must find a better way of detecting malware hosted on its sites.

● University loses nearly 1 million dollars to malware

Thieves appear to have stolen the funds from University of Virginia after compromising a computer belonging to the University's Financial Controller. Malware intercepted the Online Banking Credentials for the University's Bank accounts and initiated a fraudulent wire transfer for $996,000 to a Bank in China.

● 25 percent of Windows malware now targets USB storage devices

In a survey of small businesses, PandaLabs discovered that 48 percent had been victims of malware in the past year. Of those businesses infected, 27 percent were able to verify that a compromised USB device was at the root of the issue.

● New malware detects browser, shows fake malware warning page

While the malware is a pretty good attempt, it's not perfect. The goal is to get the user to download and install something, shelling out some cash in the process, which neither of the three browser vendors would ever recommend. The Firefox warning page, meanwhile, has an obvious typo ("Get me our of here"). In addition, it's suspicious that a webpage is going out of its way to tell you it is protecting your purchase. It's also not hard to check that the supposedly detected files do not actually exist on the user's computer. All of these missteps should raise red flags immediately; having said that, we've still not before seen this level of detail and effort from the bad guys.

● Heartland pays another $5.4m for malware infection

The United States' fourth largest credit card payments processing company Heartland Payment Systems has agreed to pay a US$5 million ($5.4 million) settlement to its financial services customer Discover over a data breach caused by a malware infection.

Heartland processed card payments for Visa, Mastercard and other financial service providers to the tune of US$70 billion in 2009.

● Rogue Win7 AV Copies the Microsoft Security Essentials Site

There are downsides to market success, and in the case of Microsoft Security Essentials is that attackers build malware designed to piggy-back ride the free security solution from Microsoft.