Expert Predicts Spyware Will Come Through RSS Feeds

At Gartner's IT Security Summit last Friday, Richard Stiennon, director of threat research at anti-spyware software vendor Webroot, made some predictions about the evolution of the spyware threat. One of his predictions is that the purveyors of spyware will turn to RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds to infect users. He also suggests that the popular Firefox web browser will be a prime target. Of course, Stiennon, when he was a VP of Research at Gartner, was also responsible for the hotly-debated prediction that IDS was dead and would be obsolete by 2005. It is 2005, and that prediction is far from true. Perhaps his latest predictions are simple media hype aimed at selling more anti-spyware software from Webroot? For more about Stiennon's predictions, see this TechWeb article: RSS To Carry Spyware Before Year's Out.