About one in every 14 programs downloaded off the Internet is malicious, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced this week. 

Browsers, including Internet Explorer, are a lot more secure than they were even five years ago, and software patches can be quickly deployed when a threat becomes known these days. So bad guys are turning increasingly to social engineering to get their malware downloaded, reports Robert McMillan at IDG News Service.

Popular social engineering tactics at the moment include phony anti-virus warning pop-ups, spam containing Trojans and search result linking to malicious sites. When going after businesses rather than consumers, cyber crooks are partial to launching spear-phishing attacks. Phony documents masquerading as planning papers or materials from a conference are sent with malicious code.

Microsoft wants to help, of course, and IE9 comes with a new SmartScreen Filter Application Reputation screening process, which combats Trojans. SmartScreen has put up a block against more than 1.5 billion attacks in the last two years, said Jeb Haber, program manager lead at Microsoft.

For more:
- see Robert McMillan's article at ITWorld

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