Britney's revenge: Celebrity porn targets your PC

Microsoft is out with its latest semi-annual security report, and there's a startling finding: There's been a big jump in malware masquerading as security software planted on people's PCs when they click email links to access celebrity porn. Call it Britney's revenge.

Typically, someone gets infected when they receive an email promising access to celebrity porn videos, and then click a link. When they visit a site, it dumps malicious code on their PC.

Often, this code is so-called "scareware," which fools people into downloading Trojans and other malware. The scareware pops up a false alert telling them that their system isn't protected. The person then is told to take an action to fix the vulnerability, such as downloading software, or clicking a button. You can see an example, provided by Microsoft, below, of a false scareware alert.

This "scareware" threat has been increasing at the same time that many other threats have been shrinking. The Microsoft report found that rogue security software grew by more than 48 percent in the second half of 2008 compared to the first half. In the report, Vinny Gullotto, general manager of Microsoft's Malware Protection Center says:

"I don't think I've seen a type of threat rise like this for many, many years. Computer users have become increasingly aware of the spread of malicious and potentially unwanted software on the Internet. The bad guys are taking advantage of this by persuading users to install rogue security software that provides little or no real protection, and may actually be malicious in nature. These criminals now have the user's valid credit card details, and a wide-open pathway for downloading more malicious sofware onto the victim's computer."

You can download the report here, or read a summary and see a video about it here.

The report had several other interesting findings. Notable among them is that most vulnerabilities these days affect applications rather than Windows or browsers. The report claims that 86% of vulnerabilities are in applications.

Also, it found that in the real world, Vista is far more secure than XP, concluding that:

Comparing the latest service packs for each version, the infection rate of Windows, Vista SP1 is 60.6 percent less than that of Windows XP SP3.

The upshot in all this? To keep your PC safe, patch your applications, run Vista instead of XP, and stay away from Britney, Paris, and other celebrity porn.