Summary: Security-related items from the news (highlights in red are ours)

● Conficker, back with a vengeance as top worm

The infamous Conficker worm first spread its malicious infection across the Internet more than eight years ago and just last month it shot back into prominence, infecting 43 percent of machines in use worldwide in the space of four weeks and, for good measure, it now installs rogue security software on compromised machines.

● Skype snooping trojan detected

“What this threat is doing is actually grabbing the sound coming from the audio devices plugged into the computer,” Selvaraj wrote. “It does this by hooking various Windows API calls that are used in audio input and output.”

● Skype Trojan can log VoIP conversations

Symantec claims to have found the public release of source code for a Trojan that targets Skype users..

Security giant Symantec claims to have found the public release of source code for a Trojan that targets Skype users.

● Microsoft ATL/MFC ActiveX Type Confusion Vulnerability

Remote exploitation of a type confusion vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.'s ATL/MFC ActiveX code as included in various vendors' ActiveX controls, could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code within Internet Explorer (IE). Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) was designed to allow interoperability between disjointed software components. It is a standardized interface solution to the programming dilemmas involved in object oriented programming, distributed transactions, and inter-language communications. Microsoft's Active Template Library (ATL) is a set of C++ templates that simplify developing COM objects.

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