Van Morrison, the veteran rock star – now in his 60s – got a rude awakening to the world of IT security over the holiday when the newspapers and newswires were full of stories that he had become a father again.

A major lawsuit – stemming from a hacker attack on the RockYou social networking applications software portal – has been filed in the US.

PandaLabs, the anti-malware labs division of Panda Security, has published its 2009 virus yearbook, examining the most intriguing malicious virus,worm and trojan infections to emerge over the last 12 months.

The number of phishing attacks “rose dramatically in the run up to Christmas”, according to managed security services company Network Box.

IT security vendor BitDefender’s end-of-year report on the state of the malware marketplace claims to show an increase in e-threats that are linked to international events, as well as a rising popularity in web 2.0-linked attack vectors.

The Aberdeen group’s third annual study into Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) issues claims to show that a growing number of companies are saving up to 55% on maintaining their compliance by adopting best practices.

McAfee’s AvertLabs’ annual research predicts that the Google Chrome `on-net’ operating system will be targeted by hackers when it is released in the New Year.

Mobile hardware vendors and carriers alike will have been less than pleased to learn that a German security researcher has not only cracked the GSM A5/1 encryption standard, but posted the resulting multi-terabyte decoded tables to the internet.

Kingston Technology, the memory and secure drives specialist, has warned users that some of its DataTraveler secure USB drives – under the right conditions – “a skilled person” can access the data on the drive.

Howard Schmidt, president and CEO of the Information Security Forum (ISF) was appointed White House Cybersecurity Coordinator just before the Holidays.