'Tis the season for lists: top seven, 10 or 25 compilations detailing everything from songs and celebrity scandals to bad business ideas and best-selling digital gizmos.

Backbone's January issue includes a list of the top eight predictions for 2008. One of these is that computer security is going to become an even bigger headache, with more and smarter attacks coming. Websense Security Labs makes the same prediction in its own top 10 security threats for 2008 list, but the company goes into more detail and its conclusions make useful—if depressing—reading.

One especially important point from Websense is that any big event, including tragedies, brings scammers out like cockroaches in a dark kitchen. Following the Hurricane Katrina fiasco in the U.S., for example, bogus charitable Web sites and e-mail campaigns popped up and people made a lot of money off the grief of others.

With the Olympics coming up next summer, Websense is warning of similar tactics: "As the Olympic torch burns, Websense researchers predict the possibility of large scale denial of service attacks on Beijing Olympic-related sites as political statements and fraud attempts through e-mail and the Web surrounding the Olympics. Additionally, Websense predicts compromises of popular Olympic news or other sports sites—attacks designed to install malicious code on end-users machines and steal personal or business confidential information.

There are nine other warnings, including an interesting prediction about voice-based phishing scams, called vishing. Read the entire list at the Websense site.

Peter Wolchak