Financially motivated malware attacks are on the rise, with automated software packages making it easy for unskilled hackers to earn a living by sending out spam, researchers at messaging security vendor Secure Computing say.

A malware kit called MPack, released by Russian hackers last December, allows pretty much anyone with $200 to become a master spammer because it is easy to use and exploits vulnerabilities in FireFox, Internet Explorer and Apple's QuickTime, says Dmitri Alperovitch, principal research scientist for Secure Computing.

The trend that "kind of defines 2007" is the convergence of traditional e-mail with Web-based attacks, in which message recipients are prompted to click on links to malicious Web sites, rather than to download attachments, Alperovitch says.

"Certainly, exploiting Web browser vulnerabilities has been common. We've seen that for a long time," he says. "Now we're seeing that capability being merged with traditional e-mail worms that sort of blanket the Internet."

Information-stealing malware now accounts for 10 percent of all threats, up from 8 percent in January, new research from Secure Computing has found. Trojans comprise 63 percent of all newly discovered malware, up from 58 percent in January.

Spyware and phishing are also becoming more problematic as attackers use more targeted attacks to steal personal and financial information. "The barriers to entry into cyber crime have been lowered so much," Alperovitch says. "People are realizing that they can make very serious money with almost no accountability, almost complete anonymity."

Quoting the analyst firm Gartner, Secure Computing's researchers say that 75 percent of enterprises will be infected by "undetectable professional-grade malware" by year-end.

About 90 percent of all e-mail is malicious, but that figure will rise as the holiday season gets closer, according to Alperovitch.

"There's a good chance we'll reach 95 percent, maybe higher, of all e-mails being malicious by the end of the year," he says.

As the storm worm showed, the automation of online attacks is allowing the creation of more botnets, he says. E-mail delivery mechanisms are also being optimized to bypass spam filters. Unfortunately, many Web surfers are far too trusting.

"If you're walking down the street and someone asks you for your Social Security number or your bank account pin, you're not going to give it to them," Alperovitch says. "Yet on the Internet, people freely give them out to anyone who sends them an e-mail message."

Here are some key security trends and events identified by Secure Computing in the first eight months of 2007:

-- The Storm worm, named after subject lines like "230 dead as storm batters Europe," and similar worms became widespread in January and the following months, with new variants being created every 15 minutes.

-- A password-stealing Trojan hit visitors to the Miami Dolphins' stadium Web site during the Super Bowl, when attackers took advantage of a vulnerability in Internet Explorer's rendering of vector markup language documents.

-- A mass-email with pictures of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in April lured people to a Web site that hosted a zero-day exploit related to Windows' handling of animated cursor files. Microsoft released a patch to fix the vulnerability.

-- More than 10,000 European Web sites hosted malware attacks in June after being compromised. "Hidden IFRAME's" were injected into the Web sites, referring visitors to malicious sites using MPack to deliver banking Trojans.

-- So-called backdoor Trojans affect home users around the world, including nearly 100,000 PCs now infected by a new wave of storm malware. "The mailings that came with subject lines such as 'You've received a postcard from a family member!' directed users to Web-hosted exploits for several different vulnerabilities; they infect users' computers and attach them to the Storm family's P2P botnet," Secure Computing writes.

Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate.