Malware is described as malicious software that can be invasive and nasty on business and home computers. They are usually in the form of worms, spyware, trojan horses (software that pretends to be useful) and net or web bots which hackers use to gain access to and control remote computers. With the explosion in internet usage and the availability of high bandwidth internet access tools like cable, DSL and T1, T3 etc., the writers of malware are also constantly evolving in the dispersal of their software. The recent trend is the localization of SPAM with the intention of making a message that could be flagged as junk email look like it came from your local chamber of commerce, the mayor's office or the youth soccer league, for example. These localized spam emails usually have catchy and very tempting headliners like "free t-shirts, tickets, baseball cap" if the unsuspecting user clicks on a link. Of course the link usually has an attachment that could be disguised as a PDF file where it is really an executable virus. Banner ads are also potential carriers of malware especially in social networking sites. We also see malware in software that offers to scan a computer for "security updates", "security threats" and "registry fixes" and "performance optimizers". Sometimes, malware is seasonal. So you may see a lot of IRS related malware during the tax season, or football related trojans during the football season. The recently concluded China Olympics saw a lot of maware offering all kinds of Olympic related "goodies". Malware writers have also been known to use variable data in their software whereby they personalize the attacks. In this case you may receive an email that promises John Doe season tickets to a local game from the local high school coach.

The OpenSUSE project recently announced a readiness to support SELInux - a Linux kernel security framework developed by the US-based National Security Agency (NSA). Here's the release:

We have exciting news for security enthusiasts, experts, and paranoid people!

Beginning with openSUSE 11.1, SUSE users will have an additional option regarding security frameworks. In addition to AppArmor, we will be adding SELinux capabilities in openSUSE 11.1, which will allow users to enable SELinux in openSUSE if they wish.

While our customer experience shows that AppArmor is the best solution for the vast majority of users, applications, and use cases, we want to give all of our users the ability to choose the security framework that’s appropriate for their respective environments and needs.

We continue to enable AppArmor as our default Host Intrusion Prevention System, and we are supporting it as the default in openSUSE 11.1 and in SUSE Linux Enterprise 11.