Guard your vaults

Thousands of Italian tourism Websites have been hit by a virus that infects the computers of visitors, then slithers through them in search of confidential information, reports The Globe and Mail.

The attack, known as The Italian Job, has hit over 4,500 websites on travel in Italy. So-called Trojan software is installed on the computers of people visiting the sites, taking over that computer and sending bank records and other data to a server believed to be located in Chicago.

Only those using out-of-date versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer are vulnerable to the attack. The attack was apparently launched using Russian software that runs at about $700. It is controlled remotely by its programmers, who can redirect the flow of information if the current server destination is shut down.