Stuxnet's command and control. (Krebs On Security)

In Stephen King's apocalyptic horror novel The Stand, a government-created virus escapes into the wild and kills most of the people on Earth. About two years ago, a similar scenario almost came true--but, fortunately for living creatures the bug was the U.S.-and-Israeli-made Stuxnet malware. The unintended victim was Chevron's computer network.

Stuxnet was the highly sophisticated worm that successfully infiltrated Iran's nuclear enrichment plants in 2010. According to The Wall Street Journal, Stuxnet wasted no time infecting friends as well as foes:

Chevron found Stuxnet in its systems after the malware was first reported in July 2010, said Mark Koelmel, general manager of the earth sciences department at Chevron. “I don’t think the U.S. government even realized how far it had spread,” he told CIO Journal. “I think the downside of what they did is going to be far worse than what they actually accomplished,” he said.

As the WSJ’s Rachael King notes, Chevron's Stuxnet infection was apparently unintentional, "much like an experimental virus escaping from a medical lab."

It might be premature to say Stuxnet was the cyberweapon equivalent of Stephen King’s fictional Captain Trips virus, since it seems Chevron wasn’t too badly damaged by the infection. But we wouldn't be surprised if someone were already using that code name for something still in development.

Do not order these via junk filter email. (flickr.com/melloveschallah)

Symantec just released its annual Internet Threat Security Report, which offers a nice wrap-up of the last year in cybersecurity. The company's software blocked 5.5 billion total attacks in 2011, versus 3 billion in 2010; 42 percent of mailboxes targeted for attack are “high level executives, senior managers, and people in R&D," which is pretty alarming if you're trying to protect IP.

That's all useful intel for IT and security pros. But parts of the report read... a little random. Betabeat found this so noticeable, we picked out a few of our favorite facts, selected for wtfery rather than newsworthiness:

1. The percentage of spam that's pharmaceutical in nature dropped dramatically, from 74 percent in 2010 to 40 percent in 2011. Perhaps people are catching onto the fact that Duane Reade is a more reliable option than misshottie@cheapgooddrugs.com? (Actually it's mostly due to the shutdown of the Rustock botnet, a spam-producing powerhouse.)

2. Data breaches spiked in April. Hey, hackers get spring fever, too.

3. English, the report tells us, is still the "lingua franca" of spam. The next most popular: Portuguese, Russian and Dutch.

4. The most malware ridden category of website? "Blogs and web communications." [Looks around, shiftily.]

5. And of course, the biggest doozy of them all: "Religious and ideological sites" apparently had three times the number of threats per infected website--and that's compared to "adult" sites. The report speculates porno companies have more financial incentive to keep their sites scoured of malware.

He doesn't feel so good. (Wikimedia Commons)

Freedom from fear of viruses, malware, botnets, and other digital nasties has long been a major benefit of Mac ownership. But today brings sad tidings: That carefree attitude will soon be no more.

Of course, Macs were never protected by some super-secret security technology, but largely by simple lack of interest on the part of bad actors. Apple simply didn’t own a big enough slice of the market to make Macs worth their while. But those days are now done. Ars Technica reports that, in a press conference yesterday, Kaspersky Lab security researchers were blunt: “Mac OS X invulnerability is a myth.”

They continued, hammering nails into the coffin of the Mac owner’s sense of security:

Expect more drive-by downloads, more Mac OS X mass-malware. Expect cross-platform exploit kits with Mac-specific exploits.

It’s worth noting that all this hellfire-and-brimstone talk is largely speculation about the future. Flashback, the exploit that prompted the panic, has proved relatively easy to rout. Since April 6th, the number of infected computers has dropped from 700,000 to 30,000. The inclusion of GateKeeper in Mountain Lion will likely also help keep threats at bay. Nonetheless, researchers recommend the addition of antivirus software, pronto.

Is there an app for that?