According to the data from customer feedback received by Trend Micro Virus Detection Center from October to December 2009, the form of malicious programs has begun to change. Money is no longer the sole objective. Cases of collecting personal information and contacts for specific purposes have emerged. Social engineering remains one of the main tools for cybercriminals. Spam attacks use specific topics as bait, while phishing gradually targets regional domain names.
An increasing number of social engineering attacks are beginning to take advantage of some hot current affairs, and their forms also show various changes. For example, in December last year, many malicious messages with Christmas themes were mixed into various social networking sites. In addition, emails with malicious program attachments were deliberately disguised as messages coming from the e-card website 123greetings.com. The new sequel "New Moon" of the movie "Twilight" also became one of the objects exploited by social engineering, serving as an advertising tool for a certain file-sharing portal site. The purpose was to illegally collect personal data through member registration.