The new high for malicious programs was revealed by security firm Symantec in the latest edition of its bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report.
The vast majority of these programs have been created in the last twelve months, said

Symantec.
Cyber criminals pump out malware to fool anti-virus programs which look for characteristics they have already seen.

Money game
The latest edition of the Symantec report covers the second half of 2007 during which time the security firm detected 499,811 new malicious code threats. This figure was up 136% on the first six months of 2007.
Throughout 2007 Symantec detected more than 711,912 novel threats which brings the total number of malicious programs that the security firm's anti-virus programs detect to 1,122,311.

The report notes: "almost two thirds of all malicious code threats currently detected were created during 2007."

The vast majority of these viruses is aimed at PCs running Microsoft Windows and is variants of already existing malicious programs that have proved useful to hi-tech criminals in the past.

Symantec said part of the rise was down to criminals increasingly using trojans as a "beachhead" to gain access to a PC and then use that route to download and install a variety of other malicious programs.

Popular malicious installations include key loggers that spring to life if particular websites are visited or programs, such as online games, are started up.
The report also put the growth in malicious code down to the increasingly professional digital criminal underground.

Typically, groups engaged in hi-tech crime employ groups of programmers to generate the novel variants.

The fact that these programmers expect to be paid drives the criminals to make as much money as possible out of the information they steal and to be constantly on the look out for new victims.

The report said: "The combination of these factors results in a high volume of new malicious code samples that threaten users online."

IBM exploring a �huge leap� in storage technology.

Handheld gadgets storing thousands of hours of film footage could soon be a reality thanks to IBM scientists.
Researchers for the computer giant are working on a technology known as racetrack memory which uses tiny magnetic boundaries to store data.
In a paper in the journal Science, the team at IBM's Almaden lab in California outlined ways to make the building blocks of the novel storage medium.
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The capacity of MP3 players could increase 100 times from present levels.
But the IBM team says racetrack memory is still seven to eight years away from commercial use.

Memory boost

Currently most desktop computers use flash memory and hard drives to store data - both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Hard drives are cheap but their moving parts mean they are not very durable. They are also slow in that they typically take a few milliseconds to find and fetch data.

By contrast flash memory is more reliable and data can be read from it much faster though it has a finite lifespan and is expensive compared to hard drives.
The work being done on racetrack memory by Dr Parkin and colleagues could produce a storage medium that is cheap, durable and fast.

Ultimately, said Dr Parkin, racetrack memory could replace both flash and hard drives in computers and other gadgets.

"We have demonstrated the physics and materials underlying racetrack memory," said Dr Stuart Parkin, an IBM fellow at the Almaden laboratory.

"It's now possible to build a racetrack memory though we've not built one yet," he said.
The racetrack memory stores data in the boundaries, known as domain walls, between magnetic regions in nanowires.