The fake tools had names such as "Win 7 Security 2012," "Vista Security 2012," "XP Security 2012," "XP Antivirus 2012" and "Win 7 Anti Virus 2012. "The bad guys know there is fresh blood out there and they do their best to infect and destroy," said Alvin Estevez, editor of SpywareRemove. com and CEO of Enigma Software, suggesting that many of the infected machines were new systems users had received for the holidays. com, with five scareware programs accounting for more than 35 percent of the infections reported by the site. Cyber-criminals have been busy in the days after Christmas, targeting users with new gadgets and computers with phishing and malware campaigns. Malware infections spiked 25 percent on the day after Christmas, according to data released by SpywareRemove. There was a...

  Older versions of Windows brought address-space layout randomization and data-execution protection to the table to protect user machines, and they also employed encryption technologies to safeguard the OS.   They did provide obstacles to attack,...   As for Windows 8, McAfee believes attacks will move out of the operating system and into the hardware itself.