Others said the schemes being used by hackers lately have shown a step up in sophistication. One security expert said some of the new attacks move far beyond the simple e-mail attachments that dominated this year. He cited the Bymer worm, which, similar to Trinity Version 3, is an automated attack worm that scans for certain types of servers with vulnerabilities and implants itself on the weak systems, increasing the efficiencies of hacking. Other worms, such as the year's most prevalent virus, Kakworm, and the recently discovered Forgotten. A, up the clever quotient by launching when an e-mail is opened, not the attachment.
Experts also worry about chat clients in the coming year.
They provide nearly total anonymity, they can quickly and anonymously send rogue files to other chat clients or chat servers and the companies that run them, and the networks are always available. Another headache for next year, ironically, will be encryption. Virtual private networks for broadband users and increased acceptance of encrypted e-mail mean sentries at the gateways won't see malicious code and will let the encrypted bits waltz in or out the front door. Awareness is way up. That's good, especially with privacy.