As malware is increasingly written with a specific target in mind, antivirus firms are deploying more intelligent detection tools and creating unique signatures for individual clients.

Over the past few years, malware attacks have evolved from a sawn-off shotgun approach, where a virus is released into the wild with the objective of infecting as many computers as possible, to a sniper approach, where Trojans are specifically crafted to spy on a particular company or even an individual.

Eric Ouellet, a research vice president in Gartner’s security, risk and privacy group, said that targeted attacks are among the most difficult to defend against.vSpeaking at the Gartner Symposium in Sydney last week, Ouellet said: “They are not indiscriminately firing a bullet and hoping it will hit somebody. They are aiming it at a computer or person.

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News source: ZDNet