Who`s the winner of woe?

Since Feb 2005, a stream of data breaches has brought the number of Americans at risk of identity fraud to 88 million. This is according to a list tallied by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

This means that with a population of nearly 300 million, close to one in three Americans have their personal details at the mercy of a criminal.

The latest incidents include the New York State Controller`s Office, affecting 1 300 people, Union Pacific which has had over 30 000 former employees` details stolen, and the American Insurance Group, which had a server stolen containing the details of more than 930 000 people.

According to the list, it is also evident that mid-May was an exceptionally busy month for hackers, and numbers are increasing with each passing day. How long will it be until not a single social security or credit number is private anymore?

Companies, despite the protection practices they have in place against malware, are saying they are being bombarded with viruses due to the installation of unpatched applications by their workers. Malware has got nothing on these unwanted vulnerable annoyances, in fact.

A recent study undertaken by Bit9 says Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7 ranked top of this list, with Apple`s iTunes 6.0.2 and Quicktime 7.0.3 coming in joint second. Skype Internet Phone 1.4, Acrobat Reader 7.02/6.03, and Sun`s Java Run-Time Environment 5.0 were also among the top five.

Surprisingly Microsoft, usually harshly judged for its flaws, only came into the list at number nine.

Despite the growing number of cases of identity theft and unsafe applications causing havoc, malware is still trying its luck at every opportunity.

It would seem malware is fighting really hard to retain "Number One Bad Guy" the title against identity thieves and unsecured applications.

Ilva Pieterse, ITWeb contributor

There are new versions of the much-hated Bagle worm making the rounds this week, arriving in inboxes as an encrypted .zip attachment.

Finnish security firm F-Secure says, "One Bagle per day - it isn`t a diet, it`s a way of life."

New instances of Bagle infection are up from one or two a week, to one a day. It would seem malware is fighting really hard to retain the title of "Number One Bad Guy".

Opportunistic Sixem-A worm is using the World Cup to creep into systems with subject lines such as "Naked World Cup game set", "Soccer fans killed five teens" and "Crazy soccer fans". Just be careful not to get caught up in the craze, as this little nasty attempts to disable security software once it gains access.

A common body message reads: "Nudists are organising their own tribute to the world cup, by staging their own nude soccer game, though it is not clear how the teams will tell each other apart. Good photos ;)"

Hey, at least it has a sense of humour, but my advice is to stay off the nudists until after the World Cup is over.

Sources used: SearchSecurity, The Register