By now you’ve probably heard about ghostnet, the large-scale operation originating from somewhere within China.  So far, 1,295 computers in 103 countries have been discovered to be infected by the sophisticated rootkit malware (rootkits are particularly tough to detect because they live at a very low level, as close to the actual machine as the operating system itself).  Like most such attacks, ghostnet was launched via ‘trojan’ malware (software embedded into commonly emailed file formats such as Word, Acrobat, or PowerPoint).  The file arrives as an attachment in an email “spoofed” to appear from a trustworthy source, and the malware executes when the user opens the seemingly innocent file.
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