The general dumbing down of the virus creation process along with attempts by for-profit hackers to tie up the resources of security firms mean that anti-virus sofware vendors are beginning to need three alphabetical letters for some Trojan families.

Occasional this naming convention throws up a double entendre-loaded moniker, as when Trojan-Downloader-Small-Coc rose to prominence in May. This week security techies intercepted the first copies of Trojan-PSW-LdPinch-bum. How they laughed.

Summer, and the silly season that accompanies it, draws to a close on Saturday with the start of September. ®

Related stories

• Russian Feds close in on Pinch Trojan authors (21 December 2007)
• Updated Vista attacked by 13-year-old virus (17 September 2007)
• Monster warns victims and pledges better defense (3 September 2007)
• Eighties throwback worm spreads via memory sticks (8 May 2007)
• VXers push small coc Trojan on unwilling world (2 May 2007)
• Imperfect Storm aids spammers (19 February 2007)
• Analysis Targeted Trojan attacks on the rise (15 October 2006)
• Virus names likely a lost cause (11 March 2006)
• Virus naming scheme gets mixed reception (6 October 2005)