McAfee Avert Labs has released a list of what it believes will be the top ten security threats of 2007. The list is depressing to say the least, and includes more spam and more phishing, and more mobile phone attacks - including SMiShing, which involves fake SMS messages trying to solicit private information.

The really big concern is that McAfee believes that a lot of this malware will be sent by professional and organized crime.

“Within a short period of time, computers have become an intrinsic and essential part of everyday life, and as a result there is a huge potential for monetary gains by malware writers,” said Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Avert Labs and product development.

“‘As we see sophisticated techniques on the rise, it’s becoming increasingly hard for the general user base to identify or avoid malware infections.”

According to McAfee Avert Labs data, there are more than 217,000 various types of known threats and thousands more not yet identified.

McAfee Avert Labs’ top ten security threats for 2007 are:

1. The number of password-stealing Web sites will increase using fake sign-in pages for popular online services such as eBay

2. The volume of spam, particularly bandwidth-eating image spam, will continue to increase

3. The popularity of video sharing on the Web makes it inevitable that hackers will target MPEG files as a means to distribute malicious code

4. Mobile phone attacks will become more prevalent as mobile devices become ’smarter’ and more connected

5. Adware will go mainstream following the increase in commercial Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs)

6. Identity theft and data loss will continue to be a public issue - at the root of these crimes is often computer theft, loss of back-ups and compromised information systems

7. The use of bots, computer programs that perform automated tasks, will increase as a tool favored by hackers

8. Parasitic malware, or viruses that modify existing files on a disk, will make a comeback

9. The number of rootkits on 32-bit platforms will increase, but protection and remediation capabilities will increase as well

10. Vulnerabilities will continue to cause concern fueled by the underground market for vulnerabilities

In July 2006, McAfee announced that it officially released protection for the 200,000th threat in its database. Since January 1, 2006, McAfee has added approximately 50,000 new threats to its database and is on track to exceed 225,000 new threats by the end of the year. Given current trends, McAfee expects the 300,000th threat to be identified by the end of 2007, demonstrating its growth potential.

While of course the report is a sales tool for McAfee to help tout their security software, it does highlight just how many threats there are, and why it’s so important to take care when online.