German spyware case raises a host of legal issues

An investigation by Chaos Computer Club, a German hacker community, which later involved experts from Kaspersky Lab's German office, revealed that, apart from Skype, the Trojan intercepted messages in all the most popular browsers, various instant messenger services and Voice-over-Internet Protocol programs including the likes of ICQ, MSN Messenger, Low-Rate VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), paltalk, SimpPro, sipgate X-Lite, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)Buster and Yahoo! Messenger.

Like its predecessors, its main function is to download files. Nevertheless, new functionality has been added that disables Mac's built-in protection system, XProtect, a simple signature scanner in other words updated on a daily basis. Once disabled, the protection system cannot receive updates from Apple, rendering it useless.

Kaspersky Lab data in October showed that the total number of malicious programs for Android outstripped that for Java 2 Micro Edition for the first time. Malware for J2ME had been the most prevalent among mobile threats for over two years.

"The fact that the growth in malware for Android has increased so dramatically indicates that, at the moment, the virus writers will most probably be concentrating on this operating system," warns Kaspersky Lab senior malware analyst Denis Maslennikov.