Thieves Winning Online War, Maybe Even in Your Computer

clipped from www.nytimes.com Phillip Porras, a computer security expert at SRI International, a science and technology research group. SAN FRANCISCO — Internet security is broken, and nobody seems to know quite how to fix it. Despite the efforts of the computer security industry and a half-decade struggle by Microsoft to protect its Windows operating system, malicious software is spreading faster than ever. The so-called malware surreptitiously takes over a PC and then uses that computer to spread more malware to other machines exponentially. Computer scientists and security researchers acknowledge they cannot get ahead of the onslaught. With vast resources from stolen credit card and other financial information, the cyberattackers are handily winning a technology arms race.