Malware Calendar Wallpaper for November 2011

Here’s the latest of our malware calendar wallpapers.

1280×800 | 1680×1050 | 1920×1200 | 2560×1600

This month’s calendar includes a fairly typical mix of cybercrime references. However, I’d like to highlight one in particular – the arrest of a Dutch teenager for stealing furniture from the Habbo Hotel virtual world.

To some people, the idea of having a virtual life seems strange. It may seem even stranger for the police to take an interest in the theft of something that’s not real. There are, of course, reasons why they would. For one thing, the virtual theft was carried out by stealing the login credentials of members of Habbo Hotel – essentially a real-world phishing scam like any other. For another, the theft and sale of virtual property can be as lucrative as any other type of cybercrime: in this case, the stolen goods had a real-world price-tag of more than €4,000.

This case underlines the fact that *any* kind of online transaction, if it can be used to make money illegally, if of interest to cybercriminals. So we all need to remain vigilant and take care to safeguard all our online activities.