According to a Thursday-released report by cybersecurity firm McAfee, China-based hackers conducted a “coordinated, covert and targeted” campaign of cyber-espionage against some of the leading Western energy firms, downloading sensitive data from their corporate networks.

According to security firm McAfee’s ‘2011 Threats Predictions’, recently published by the L. A. Times, the coming year will witness an increase in cyber-attacks against Apple devices. The report by McAfee researchers states that the key targets of hacking attacks in 2011 will largely be the most talked about online platforms like the Apple iPhone, Google TV, and foursquare.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, citing anonymous sources and questionnaire supposedly being circulated by European Union (EU) investigators, the materialization of the high-profile acquisition of security-software specialist McAfee by bigwig chipmaker Intel will apparently be delayed due to close scrutiny by European officials.

According to analysts, Intel's acquisition of Security Company McAfee could help the chip maker publicize in embedded markets, in which the company has struggled to establish a presence.

Many McAfee VirusScan Enterprise consumers, who are using Windows XP SP3, had their svchost. exe flagged as malicious.

The most appalling disclosure was exposed by Ed Bott at ZDNet, stating that McAfee has confessed to its clients that it followed inferior quality guarantee processes in this matter.

McAfee's anti-virus update, which took down Windows XP computers across the globe, has affected only a small percentage of its customers. McAfee has apologized for the inconvenience.

The mistakenly termed part of Windows as virus, by a security update has created problems for thousands of PCs globally.

The PCs started to restart endlessly after this update was ended across by security firm McAfee, corporate customers of which have been found to be the worst hit, while some reported problems.

McAfee's extensively used antivirus software program failed dramatically on Wednesday, which caused tens of thousands of Windows XP PCs to collapse or frequently reboot.

The accusations made by Google and McAfee, that malicious software had been used to spy on tens of thousands of Vietnamese web users, have been rejected by Vietnam.

The anti-Government blogs and websites were being targeted by the software, according to the companies. McAfee claimed that the perpetrators of the attacks may have allegiance to the country's Government.

According to a recent McAfee survey report, written by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), cyber-attacks are increasingly being used as a strategic weapon by governments as well as political organizations.