Rootkit

The collection of data from mobile phones by Carrier IQ brings to mind the FTC's imposition of 20-year privacy settlements on Facebook and Google.

At least 10,000 websites have been compromised to redirect users to a new exploit toolkit, called "Nice Pack," according to researchers at Dell SecureWorks. Nice Pack, discovered Wednesday, attempts to take advantage of flaws in users' third-party apps, such as Java and Adobe, to install the "Zero Access Trojan," a rootkit that allows attackers to take control of a victim's machine. Though researchers are still looking into the threat, they have discovered that the JavaScript on compromised sites is nearly identical to the malicious code recently found on MySQL.com, which was infected to redirect users to the Black Hole exploit toolkit.

While any rootkit that targets the BIOS of a computer is a scary proposition, users should rest easy that the threat -- as it stands now -- won't impact many people.

A new botnet made up of more than 4.5 million infected computers is "practically indestructible," according to researchers at Kaspersky Lab. But some disagree.

The TDSS rootkit lost one distribution channel, but quickly gained another.